Senator Inhofe not too long ago delivered a long speech to the Senate, consisting of his usual rant against global warming. It included this statement:
Greenland has COOLED since the 1940’s!
In fact, current temperatures in Greenland — a poster boy for climate alarmists - are COOLER than the temperatures there in the 1930s and 1940s, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Greenland has COOLED since the 1940s! A fact the media and global warming activists conceal.
Is the Oklahoma republican drawing a true picture of temperature change in the frozen north? No.
The discussion on the thread “Not Alike” has turned very nasty, degenerating into vitriol.
For a long time I have upheld a “free” comment policy, only editing foul language, in an attempt to encourage the free exchange of ideas. But this policy has been abused beyond belief. I myself have a tendency to “call a spade a spade” — that’s what adults sometimes do. But we have to edit ourselves when children are present, and discussion lately has too often become intolerably childish. For too long I have let the kids play rough.
There are numerous feedbacks in the climate system, and the feedbacks which affect global temperature are overwhelmingly positive. One example is water vapor feedback: increased temperature leads to greater absolute humidity in the atmosphere, and water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, so this further increases warming. Another is ice albedo feedback: warmer conditions reduce snow and ice cover, which are highly reflective of incoming sunlight; when snow and ice are replaced with open land and ocean (which are far less reflective), earth’s albedo decreases, so the planet absorbs a greater fraction of incoming sunlight and again we experience further warming.
I usually only post about issues related to global warming. But I’m just so astounded by the latest news, I have to make an exception. I knew our government (by which I mean the executive branch of the federal government) was disingenuous, but this takes the cake. The Associated Press reports that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) actually staged a fake “press conference”, with FEMA employees playing the role of reporters.
The company I work for is headquartered in Carlsbad, California, about 30 miles north of San Diego. Needless to say, the office has been closed for several days due to the terrible wildfires raging in southern California. CNN reports that nearly a million people have been evacuated, over a thousand homes have been destroyed, and Qualcomm stadium (home of the San Diego Chargers) has become a refugee center. Monetary damages could easily top one billion dollars.
John Stossel stars in a recent TV report that’s getting a lot of exposure in the denialist blogosphere. It’s basically the same old same old denialist garbage.
Where to begin? Let’s start with this: he makes a big deal about temperature increase happening before CO2 increase during ice ages. His implication is clearly that it’s not CO2 that causes temperature increase, it’s the other way around. This is a favorite denialist argument, usually followed by proclamations that Al Gore is a big fat liar.
I posted some time ago about the recent paper by Lockwood and Frohlich (Proc. R. Soc. A, doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880), showing that recent trends in solar activity can’t explain modern global warming, because they’re going in the wrong direction. It so happens that Svensmark and Friis-Christensen have issued a reply to Lockwood and Frohlich. Notice I haven’t given a journal citation for their reply; that’s because it’s not published in the peer-reviewed literature.
A reader has suggested that modern warming, and the “medieval warm period” (MWP), are alike. In fact he states:
What you need to show, to keep your position logical, is that there is some difference between MWP and present day warming other than the hypothesized cause. Because the hypothesized cause is what is up for examination.
You need to show that either in amount of warming, geographical spread or something else, the two are quite different. Otherwise, the argument similar effects similar causes is very strong.
I strongly disagree; the argument “similar effects similar causes” is very weak. But let’s compare modern warming to the MWP anyway.
The science teacher who posts videos under the pseudonym wonderingmind42 has another excellent video to offer: How it all ends, or, “in the test tube.”
I especially like his suggested term for the phenomenon we’re in the middle of: global climate destabilization. Definitely worth a look.
Amid appeals for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, countercries of “it’s all due to the sun” or “it’s all just natural cycles,” it’s easy to forget that there are in fact many forces which affect global climate, and in particular, global temperature. Frankly there’s no doubt that man-made greenhouse gases are the principal cause for modern global warming (from about 1975 to the present). The truly worrisome thing is that these gases (notably carbon dioxide) will persist in the atmosphere for a very long time, and that we haven’t yet seen all the warming due to the greenhouse gases we’ve already emitted. But just because greenhouse gases are dominant right now, doesn’t mean that those other factors have stopped working.
