How Bad Is Global Warming?

[brainpanhandler]

There's plenty of research out there that explains where that excess heat went

No, no, no. Foul. You are not allowed to cite 'research' from external sources. Unless you have personally traveled the globe and gathered the data yourself and analyzed it yourself you can't bring that into the discussion. No links. No data. No research. Such things will not be looked at, only 'logic'. Therefore, unless the surface temperatures of the globe rise uniformally across the entire globe in a linear manner in lockstep with increasing human CO2 emissions and in precise agreement with climate models AGW must be bunkum.


namaste.

[DrEvil]

Oops. My bad.

I will now go read 10 Anthony Watts blog posts as penance.

[slimmouse]

Yeah, because no one ever gets cancer.

Yeah, and were at war with it arent we. Were curing people and killing that disease quicker than you can shake a stick at it, arent we?

There is no pause. Surface temperatures are still going up, not just as fast as they did 15 years ago.

There's plenty of research out there that explains where that excess heat went, but hey - keep sticking your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist.

I really dont understand this to be honest

Maybe we'll all spontaneously evolve our consciousness to a higher plane with unicorns and fucking rainbows.

Im not quite sure thats how any of that stuff works either. Im kinda big on the idea of reincarnation myself, which doesnt bode well for us in the next life I guess, if we dont nanage to get ourselves out of this beautiful shithole that the current "most civilised" intelligence has created over the last 10 plus thousand years.

[DrEvil]

Yeah, because no one ever gets cancer.

Yeah, and were at war with it arent we. Were curing people and killing that disease quicker than you can shake a stick at it, arent we?

Uh, yes we are, actually. What's your point? Are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy going on with cancer research too?

There is no pause. Surface temperatures are still going up, not just as fast as they did 15 years ago.

There's plenty of research out there that explains where that excess heat went, but hey - keep sticking your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist.

I really dont understand this to be honest

There is no warming pause. The amount of surface heating has slowed down, not stopped like you're claiming. The research I mention is plastered all over this thread. Of course, it helps if you read it instead of dismissing it out of hand while waving your hands and intoning Ia! Ia! IPCC fthagn!

Maybe we'll all spontaneously evolve our consciousness to a higher plane with unicorns and fucking rainbows.

Im not quite sure thats how any of that stuff works either. Im kinda big on the idea of reincarnation myself, which doesnt bode well for us in the next life I guess, if we dont nanage to get ourselves out of this beautiful shithole that the current "most civilised" intelligence has created over the last 10 plus thousand years.

OK, so how do you propose we get ourselves out of this beautiful shit-hole?

And if you're so big on reincarnation: Aren't you a little worried that you're wrong? After all - your future depends on it.

[Luther Blissett]

I understand why it's a part of the conversation, but I'm more interested in radical forms of resistance.

I mostly agree with this, but under the right circumstances it might work. Say, if solar and carbon cost the same to produce, but carbon is taxed more, then people might migrate to solar.

Special taxes can work if you do it right. Norway is subsidizing electric cars like crazy right now, with the purpose of getting as many as possible on the roads as fast as possible. The four bestselling cars in Q1 were all electric.

But overall, I'm leaning more towards the radical resistance vein of thought too. The vested interests who want to maintain the status quo are too entrenched to dig out with the usual "civilized" tools.

(Hi NSA )

You're right in that - it probably would have been a great idea at the dawn of the industrial revolution, perhaps.

I think that my radicalism is influenced by the idea of how far behind we are, and how wrapped up in plastics and petroleum-based products we are as a culture - as far as I'm aware, the cost to the planet for even switching to renewable resources moves us further beyond the tipping point in terms of the manufacture of parts, running the plants, the machines that build the devices themselves, the physical plants themselves, etc. A 100% sustainable capitalist planet cannot be created.

I cite it all the time, but it's important: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math. The oil (not counting coal or tracked gas) in reserves currently on the books that has to be combusted is five times the "legal limit" that might keep us out of endless feedback loops and runaway global warming. It represents $27 trillion in assets that oil companies are leveraging against. And that's only that one factor, not counting methane release, aforementioned very popular fossil fuels, and the unstoppable demand of globalization and westernization. Oil must be stopped - not merely opposed - immediately.

[DrEvil]

^^Yup. Agree wholeheartedly. I'm of the opinion that all oil exploration should be banned immediately, all new projects halted and existing projects wound down as fast as feasible.

None of that will happen as long as neo-liberal capitalism is in charge, so the neo-liberals have to go. Their ideology should be treated just like any other insane ideology - ignored, occasionally dragged into the spotlight for a laugh and then kicked back to the gutter where it belongs.

[Ben D]

There you go Monk...because you were observed by that RI member to not go off your brain when engaging an agw skeptic, you were initially under suspicion of being my sockpuppet..... .....is that aberrated or isn't it?

Is there a name for that sort of mental distortion of reality.

[Ben D]

There is no pause. Surface temperatures are still going up, not just as fast as they did 15 years ago.

OK DrEvil....so please provide the data source and observed amount the global surface temperatures have increased since the year 2000?

[DrEvil]

I would love to, but you're not supposed to feed the trolls.

[Ben D]

I would love to, but you're not supposed to feed the trolls.

In that case, your claim can be dismissed as being B/S.....in future don't make claims that you can't back up....the pause stands!

Seems some members want RI general discussion forums to be merely a circle jerk exclusive for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming alarmist true believers....no science input welcome!

[slimmouse]

I would love to, but you're not supposed to feed the trolls.

Well I'd like to understand this. Some peoiple are saying there has been no termperature increase for almost 17 years now. Either this is true of it isnt.

And just to confirm - you have, no doublt compared this change in surface termperatute to the projections based on Solar activiity,? I ask this, since the models Ive seen suggest that the planet would still be warming fro a short while longer at least.

About the cancer thing Dr. You can either look seriously into the cancer industry, or perhaps its easier to look at anyione you know who has had cancer and is still alive. It has killed everyone I know personally who ever had it.- or should I say anyone who I know who was diagnosed and treated[ is now dead.

And the "Unicorns and rainbows" stuff.The tone of your thoughts, along with previous posts suggest to me that you believe that our consciousness will never experience life in another form in another dimension ( another frequency). Nonetheless, if you want my opinioon, getting off this planet is really quite simple. It involves engaiging ones consciousness, in a serious manner in everything you do, behaving with honour and integrity in all you say and do, and being true to yourself. For me, we're all in this for the long haul. And , like the Universe. along with the rest of creation,we're all a work in progress

Finally, atheist or not, there is nothing wrong with trying to live our lives this way. The trouble is that the vast majority of civilisation have little to zero time to even think about such stuff.

[Ben D]

Since evil won't....here come the goodies.... global surface land and sea temperature trend....source of data...RSS..

...and Slim...so as you are not confused, RSS data is derived from satellite remote sensing, there are a few other data collection sources that also show the pause, but RSS shows the longest period at almost 18 years, but they all show the pause...some 15 years, etc..



ps..Slim....your opinion wrt universe and integrity above is naturally wise...and I personally have a high regard for your intuition, but science is about the material universe and thus it is best when in Rome, do what the Romans do....otherwise it is casting pearls and all that stuff...

[DrEvil]

Since you insist:

...
Though warming didn't stop completely – global temperatures have risen by an average of about 0.05°C per decade since then
...

http://www.weather.com/news/science/env ... y-20140109

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 45597.html

Gaps in data on Arctic temperatures account for the ‘pause’ in global warming

It was the evidence that climate change sceptics loved to cite. While the scientific community’s warnings about global warming had become ever more convincing, the critics pointed time and again to graphs showing the rise in the world’s average surface temperatures has slowed down since 1998 – a fact extensively interpreted by many vocal opponents as a fundamental failure in the basic science of climate change.

Now the scientists appear to have come up with an explanation. That much-vaunted “pause” in global warming can be largely explained by a failure to record an unprecedented rise in Arctic temperatures over the past 15 years, a study has found.

Two independent scientists have found that global temperatures over the past decade have almost certainly risen two-and-half times faster than Met Office scientists had conservatively assumed when they estimated Arctic warming because of a lack of surface temperature records in the remote region. Moreover, when the latest estimates of Arctic temperatures are included in the global temperatures, the so-called “pause” in global warming all but disappears and temperatures over the past 15 or so years continue to increase as they have done since the 1980s, the scientists said.

Surface temperatures are effectively measured over only 84 per cent of the Earth, and a lack of weather stations in the Arctic in particular has long been recognised as a major gap in the Met Office database of global temperatures.

This led to the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia to assume for the purpose of their calculations that the Arctic was warming as fast as the rest of the world, which they realised was probably an underestimate of the true position. But now scientists have worked out a way of estimating these surface temperatures in the Arctic from satellite readings of atmospheric temperatures. The study confirmed that the Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth – and its rapidly rising temperatures easily offset the “pause” in global warming when its temperatures are included in calculations of average global temperatures.

The study, by two researchers who are not climate scientists, is seen as one of the most important insights into the apparent flatlining of global average temperatures over the past 15 years, which has allowed climate sceptics to claim that global warming has “stopped” and that climate change will not be as bad as predicted.

Kevin Cowtan of the University of York and Robert Way of the University of Ottawa used a specialised statistical technique known as “kriging” to extrapolate from satellite temperature data to the ground, in order to circumvent the problem of there being too few weather stations distributed around the Arctic.

Their study, to be published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, found that if these Arctic surface temperatures were included in global temperature estimates, then the average global increase went from 0.05C per decade to 0.12C per decade – effectively eliminating the “pause”.

“We have developed a method for using satellite data to fill in the gaps in the Met Office data. Our global record suggests that surface temperatures have been warming two and a half times faster than Met Office estimates over the past 16 years,” Dr Cowtan said.

“The temperature change for any individual year is not very large but together they make a significant difference to recent temperature trends,” he said.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a leading climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that the new study is “excellent” and is a very convincing explanation for something that has puzzled other researchers for many years.

“The problem with the polar areas lacking data coverage has been known for a long time, but I think this study has basically solved it. People will argue about the details, but I think this will hold up to scrutiny,” Dr Rahmstorf said.

Tim Osborn, of the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit, said that it is clear from the rapidly melting ice in the Arctic, as well as the limited temperature readings from northern Canada and Russia, that the Arctic is warming faster than other places in the world.

“This may explain part of the recent slowdown in warming over the Earth’s surface. The real warming may not have slowed as much as out data showed,” Dr Osborn said.

However, he cautioned against stating that this explains everything. “The slowdown in warming over the last decade may still be there, even if not as pronounced as we previously thought,” he added.

Other research has for instance shown that the deeper layers of the ocean are warming far faster than scientists had thought, indicating that huge amounts of heat from the atmosphere are being stored in the deep sea.

Climate scientists also emphasised that the last 16 years is too short a time frame to judge long-term trends and that there have been similar short-term “pauses” in the past which have not lasted.

Gavin Schmidt of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York said that there is unlikely to be a single, simple explanation for the apparent “pause”.

[DrEvil]

I would love to, but you're not supposed to feed the trolls.

Well I'd like to understand this. Some peoiple are saying there has been no termperature increase for almost 17 years now. Either this is true of it isnt.

And just to confirm - you have, no doublt compared this change in surface termperatute to the projections based on Solar activiity,? I ask this, since the models Ive seen suggest that the planet would still be warming fro a short while longer at least.

Solar activity is not the main driver behind current climate change. All the models take it into account.

About the cancer thing Dr. You can either look seriously into the cancer industry, or perhaps its easier to look at anyione you know who has had cancer and is still alive. It has killed everyone I know personally who ever had it.- or should I say anyone who I know who was diagnosed and treated[ is now dead.

Ditto on the "everyone I know with cancer is dead" (minus my dad). But so what? It's anecdotal. Doesn't prove anything either way. Survival rates are going up, especially for young people.

And the "Unicorns and rainbows" stuff.The tone of your thoughts, along with previous posts suggest to me that you believe that our consciousness will never experience life in another form in another dimension ( another frequency). Nonetheless, if you want my opinioon, getting off this planet is really quite simple. It involves engaiging ones consciousness, in a serious manner in everything you do, behaving with honour and integrity in all you say and do, and being true to yourself. For me, we're all in this for the long haul. And , like the Universe. along with the rest of creation,we're all a work in progress

Actually, I'm leaning more towards 'Consciousness is overrated'. As for 'life in another form in another dimension (another frequency)' : What dimension? What kind of frequencies?

(Wildly off-topic: They're about to test whether the universe is holographic or not, using the 'Holometer'.
If the universe is holographic, its basic building blocks are information. If that's the case, 'God' could be explained as a virus. Something that has infected our part of the universe and changed the underlying laws just enough to allow life as we know it to exist.)

Finally, atheist or not, there is nothing wrong with trying to live our lives this way. The trouble is that the vast majority of civilisation have little to zero time to even think about such stuff.

If we spent more time thinking about the real world and how to fix it, and less time on 'spiritual enlightenment', we might not be in the hole we're currently in. As far as I'm concerned magical thinking is holding humanity back.

[Sounder]

If we spent more time thinking about the real world and how to fix it, and less time on 'spiritual enlightenment', we might not be in the hole we're currently in. As far as I'm concerned magical thinking is holding humanity back.

But we don't spend time thinking about the 'real' world, rather we spend our time trying to impose our pretenses on the real world.

But I do agree that it is magical thinking that is holding us back, yet magic seems to come in many flavors.