Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

Originally Posted by koman

Are Polar Vortexes part of global warming too? .....of course they must be...everything else is....

We’ve been over this time and time before, please do try to stay current (even if you’re not posting on this thread any longer and just viewing it),…….

Understanding the Blizzard of ’15 – Enhanced By a Changing Climate

Before this latest storm, we’ve seen a long-term pattern of more extreme precipitation, particularly in New England winters. Climate scientists had long predicted this would happen in a warming world. Here’s why.

Dr. Michael Mann:

Climate change is making these sorts of storms more common, much as it is making Sandy-like Superstorms and unusually intense hurricanes more common. Asking whether these storms were caused by climate change, however, is asking the wrong question. What we *can* say is that they were likely made worse by climate change.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth:

The number 1 cause of this is that it is winter. In winter it is cold over the continent. But it is warm over the oceans and the contrast between the cold continent and the warm Gulf Stream and surrounding waters is increasing. At present sea surface temperatures are more than 2F above normal over huge expanses (1000 miles) off the east coast and water vapor in the atmosphere is about 10% higher as a result. About half of this can be attributed to climate change.

Greg Laden’s Blog:

Storms of roughly this magnitude, in this the New York City area, have occurred in 1888, 1947, 1978, 1993, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2010. A similar pattern would emerge if the focal area was Boston. Weather Wunderground lists these snow events for New York City, indicating that half of the heavy events since the mid nineteenth century have occurred in the last 12 years:

1. 26.9″ Feb 11-12, 2006
2. 25.8″ Dec 26-27, 1947
3. 21.0″ Mar 12-14, 1888
4. 20.9″ Feb 25-26, 2010
5. 20.2″ Jan 7-8, 1996
6. 20.0″ Dec 26-27, 2010
7. 19.8″ Feb 16-17, 2003
8. 19.0″ Jan 26-27, 2011
9. 18.1″ Jan 22-24, 1935
9. 18.1″ Mar 7-8, 1941

Both the odd jet stream and the warm sea surface temperatures can be pegged as likely effects of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This added to the clear pattern of more of these storms happening very recently strongly suggest that it is reasonable to characterize this storm as a “global warming amplified storm.” This is not unexpected.

Via Climate Nexus:

Dr. Jennifer Francis:

Strong winter nor’easters along the NE coast of the U.S. are certainly not anything new or unusual, and when they occur, a strong jet stream with a trough over the eastern U.S. is always the culprit. That said, there are a few climate-change related factors that are likely conspiring to make this storm potentially one for the record books.

First, the ocean temperatures in the NW Atlantic are well above normal. This provides both a strong land-ocean temperature contrast to help fuel the jet stream and also additional oceanic moisture, which provides energy and moisture for the storm.

Second, global water vapor content is higher now (about 7% on average) than it was several decades ago (a direct result of global warming), which again, provides additional energy and moisture for this and any storm that forms today. (see video below)

Third, the western ridge/eastern trough pattern of the jet stream that is in place now has also been very persistent most of this winter as well as most of last year. This very wavy and persistent pattern is consistent with my hypothesis for the atmosphere’s response to Arctic amplification, but the jury is still out as to whether the Arctic has played a direct role in causing these recent patterns. The ridge in the west is directly responsible for the drought out west, the cold in the upper midwest, and the stormy western N. Atlantic this winter.

Blue thanks for the nice picture.

Climate economist Richard Tol, who normally is all about numbers and serious economic analysis, wrote a few days ago about the increasing radicalization of the climatistas:

Every movement has its nutters. Climate warriors have long ago stopped being civil. But we seem to be entering a new level of radicalisation.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001. In 2014, Greenpeace activists damaged the Nazca Lines. Greenpeace has often broken the law, but their actions have always been directed against those who harm the environment. They appealed to a moral authority higher than the legal ones. Nazca, however, was wanton vandalism. And it was not a solo action. Twenty people trampled over ancient heritage. The Greenpeace media team happily beamed pictures across the world. And when it emerged that the world was not amused, Greenpeace’ response was closer to damage control and cover-up than remorse and cooperation with the Peru government.

In January 2015, a Greenpeace activist called for the beheading of a member of the House of Lords on the website of the Guardian. When challenged, he repeated the call, and again. People who questioned the wisdom of these remarks were attacked or banned. The Guardian actively moderates its comments, but even though Gary Evans’ calls to behead Matt Ridley caused a bit of a stir, it took the editors 32 hours to realize that death threats against political opponents is not really how we like to do things in Britain nowadays. (The Guardian has since worked hard to try to erase the past.) As if on cue, Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader, called for the decriminalisation of belonging to a violent terror group."

Richard Tol: Radical greens

Ya gotta wonder when the Weather Underground is gonna break out and start bombing again, eh?

The final nails were placed in the deniers coffin with the reports from NOAA, NASA, JMA and the Met Office stating 2014 was the hottest year on record (Met Office tied with).

Originally Posted by S Landreth

2014 global temperature reports

1) JMA – Hottest
2) NASA – Hottest
3) NOAA – Hottest
4) Met Office – Ties with hottest

Today the deniers are having dirt thrown on their coffin.

World Metereological Organisation’s analysis narrowly places 2014 as the hottest recorded since 1850, as global warming continues

Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, according to the UN World Meteorological Organisation, as rising carbon emissions continue to trap heat and drive climate change.

The WMO’s new analysis narrowly places 2014 as the hottest recorded since 1850, as have recent analyses from other organisations. The WMO analysis is particularly authoritative as it brings together a number of leading temperature records, as well as alternative ways of estimating the warmth of the globe.

The average global air temperatures over land and sea in 2014 were 0.57C above the average of 14.00C for the 1961-1990 reference period. The record temperature was above those in 2005 and 2010, the next hottest years, but only by a small amount which was within the margin of uncertainty in the calculations.

“The overall warming trend is more important than the ranking of an individual year,” said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud. “2014 was nominally the warmest on record, although there is very little difference between the three hottest years.”

“We expect global warming to continue, given that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the increasing heat content of the oceans are committing us to a warmer future,” he said. “In 2014, record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods in many countries and drought in some others – consistent with the expectations of a changing climate.”

Global sea-surface temperatures reached record levels in 2014, which is significant because 93% of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and other human activities ends up in the oceans.

The WMO said it was notable that 2014’s record temperatures occurred without a fully-developed El Niño event.

These occur when warmer than average seas in the eastern tropical Pacific combine, in a feedback loop, with weather systems to drive up temperatures. The high temperatures in 1998, the hottest year of the 20th century, occurred during a strong El-Niño. On land, England saw its hottest year in three and a half centuries, according to the Central England Temperature data set.

The confirmation of 2014’s extreme heat comes ahead of the next round of preparatory UN climate change negotiations in Geneva, starting on 9 February. These are intended to pave towards a global agreement to tackle climate change, the deadline for which is a summit in Paris in December.

The WMO analysis is based, amongst others, on three datasets - Hadcrut, NOAA and NASA - and the analysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Temperature data (HadCRUT4)

Another record broken

Sea level hits highest on record in 2014

Global sea level time series

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A 50th anniversary few remember: LBJ's warning on carbon dioxide

It is a key moment in climate change history that few remember: This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first presidential mention of the environmental risk of carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a February 8, 1965 special message to Congress warned about build-up of the invisible air pollutant that scientists recognize today as the primary contributor to global warming.

"Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places," said Johnson less than three weeks after his 1965 inauguration. "This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels."

The speech mainly focused on all-too-visible pollution of land and waterways, including roadside auto graveyards, strip mine sites, and soot pollution that had marred even the White House.

Within the year, Johnson would sign six new environmental laws during a period better remembered for the strife that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Johnson also that year established a dozen new national monuments, historic sites, and recreation areas; and submitted a draft nuclear non-proliferation treaty to the United Nations.

Carbon risk, of course, still stymies policymakers. But it was not ignored entirely in the wake of Johnson's "Special Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty." In fact, the warnings and predictions given to Johnson from his science team proved remarkably prescient.

On-target estimate

The science on carbon dioxide as known at the time, including forecasts of warming and sea level rise, was detailed in a chapter of a report on environmental pollution issued later that year by the president's Science Advisory Committee. Pioneering climate scientist Roger Revelle chaired the sub-committee that wrote the chapter in the November 1965 report. While citing a need for better calculations with "large computers," Revelle's panel delivered a forecast on growing atmospheric carbon that proved on-target.

Coal, oil, and natural gas burning would lift atmospheric carbon dioxide between 14 percent and 30 percent by the year 2000, the panel estimated. In fact, CO2 increased 15.5 percent by 2000, and is 25 percent higher today than in 1965.

"Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment," the report said, echoing language Revelle first had used in a 1957 scientific paper when he was at the University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "Within a few generations, he is burning the fossil fuels that accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years."

Ken Caldeira, atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, said the exchanges between scientists and the White House 50 years ago have significance for climate discussions today.

"To the best of my knowledge, 1965 was the first time that a U.S. President was ever officially warned of environmental risks from the accumulation of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Caldeira said in an email. "This year will mark a half-century of Presidential knowledge of the risks of climate change. I wish I could say that there has been a half-century of concerted efforts to reduce these risks.

"The science of climate and the carbon-cycle that was reported to President Johnson in 1965 largely holds up today, demonstrating that climate science is a mature science," Caldeira added. "Climate scientists are still arguing about the details, but knowledgeable people have agreed about the fundamentals for a long time."

Cue to Johnson's thinking

The only surviving member of the sub-panel, Wallace Broecker, geology professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute, said by telephone he does not recall work on it, though he might have been asked to review the chapter by Revelle, then at Harvard, and the other panel members, who were at Scripps.

As a young Columbia faculty member in 1965, Broecker had already begun what would be his seminal work on ocean chemistry and the carbon cycle; the chapter includes an appendix of detailed calculations on that subject.

A clue to Johnson's own thinking about his environmental message – and his concern about potential push-back he'd face from industry proponents – may be found in a telephone conversation he had three days before sending it to Congress. Johnson sought support for his environmental initiatives from United Auto Workers' union chief Walter Reuther, a recording of the phone call shows.

"Now my natural beauty message is going up Monday, and it is an eloquent thing," Johnson told Reuther. "We think it will be our best message." He added that White House speechwriter Richard Goodwin and his team had crafted the language with two figures who later would be recognized as icons of the conservation movement, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and financier-philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller.

Congressional master

Udall had two years earlier authored the book, The Quiet Crisis, about land and water degradation. Rockefeller co-founded the American Conservation Association, which later merged into the World Wildlife Fund. The two were then working closely with the president's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, on the environmental initiatives she hoped to make her legacy.

The president's message to Congress called for White House "Conference on Natural Beauty" to be co-chaired by the First Lady and Rockefeller, grandson of oilman John D. Rockefeller. Nearly 1,000 delegates attended the conference, which was held in May.

Johnson, well-recognized for his mastery of Congressional politics, knew his plan faced opposition – especially his call for devoting 3 percent of highway trust cash for purposes other than road building, such as the planting of trees and wildflowers on roadsides. Johnson urged influential auto union leader Reuther to meet with one of the most vocal opponents, Democratic Michigan Sen. Pat McNamara, the public works chairman. The president suggested he deliver the message that the state's workers supported cleaning up pollution, because in the end, it would sell more cars.

"Now you must not quote me," Johnson says. "You just must get the positive, affirmative message out… how we're going to have a real campaign to see America, go to Wyoming, go to Colorado, and get the kids out on Sunday afternoon… and we'll make more automobiles, and sell more!

"Now you're intelligent enough to take it from there," Johnson cajoles.

Faith in a solution

The idea of ramping up car sales may seem counter to Johnson's warning about the risk of increasing fossil fuel emissions. But Johnson's message to Congress projects faith that the auto emissions problem was solvable. "I intend to institute discussions with industry officials…leading to an effective elimination or substantial reduction of pollution from liquid-fueled automobiles," he said.

It is not surprising that then-fledgling carbon dioxide science was overshadowed by the other monumental problems Johnson catalogued in his address: degradation of every major river system, eye-watering noxious air pollution in cities, an America where "skeletons of discarded cars litter the countryside."

In the following months, the president would sign the legislation most associated with Lady Bird—the Highway Beautification Act, which forced landscaping beside federally funded roads and removal of junkyards. Other 1965 laws included the Water Quality Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, and the Land and Conservation Fund Act. Among new protected areas Johnson established in 1965 were Ellis Island in New York, the Agate Fossil Beds in Nebraska, and the Pecos Indian pueblos site in New Mexico.

"There are more thinking people in America thinking of improving their land and their life at any period in America since I've known it," Johnson said in the eight-minute call with Reuther. "They're fussing about junkyards along the roads and pollution in the rivers, and the whole natural beauty thing. There've been more editorials about it, more garden clubs interested. I really feel it…If that's true, it's a good sign. It's something we want to build on."

________________

Even if you’re not a believer this is why climate change should matter to you. You’re paying more for almost everything you purchase.

Insurance Companies Coming to Terms with Climate Risks

An actuary is a business professional who analyzes the financial consequences of risk. Actuaries use mathematics, statistics, and financial theory to study uncertain future events, especially those of concern to insurance and pension programs.

Insurance companies make money by hiring the smartest bean counters on the planet to slice and dice statistical measures of risk. The American Academy of Actuaries has now produced a statement on the risks of Climate Change.

American Academy of Actuaries:

• Global mean surface temperatures have increased by three-quarters of a degree Celsius over the last 100 years.
• Seven of the 10 warmest years on record for America’s contiguous 48 states have occurred since 1990.
•The fraction of global land area experiencing extremely hot summertime temperatures has increased ten-fold over the past 50 years.Over the past three decades, the number of weather-related loss events in North America grew by a factor of five, according to a 2012 report by Munich Re.This compares with a four-fold increase in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America. North America faces every type of hazardous weather risk – hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, flood, wildfire, and storms, according to the report. One reason is that no east-west mountain range exists in North America to prevent southern warm air from colliding with cold Canadian weather fronts.As weather-related damages increase, these costs fall on insurers, businesses, and consumers. The world’s five largest natural catastrophes ranked by insured losses in 2012 all occurred in the United States, including Hurricane Sandy, drought in the West, and various storms and tornadoes, according to Munich Re. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded 80 U.S. weather/climate events that each had losses exceeding $1 billion between 2004 and 2013, compared with only 46 events in the previous decade

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Originally Posted by bsnub

So some have come out and tried to deny science. I am calling you lot out. Can you post up one scientific organization that disagrees that man has cause climate change?

You morons can find "climate economists" all day and the reason why is simple for you pinheads. Cash flow must be maintained at all costs. Greed. Old white men fucking up the world for the rest of us.

Go figure. no takers