It’s the 2nd day of summer and we have a frost advisory tonight. How the hell is this 1 degree per century increase supposed to work anyway!?? I’m so friggin pissed and frustrated I almost put this in the pit, but I really want to know the logic of this shit.
I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from opening my mouth.
IIRC, the rise in temperature’s supposed to be a rise in some sort of a global average. There’re some places that’re supposed to get colder and some places warmer.
Have you already forgotten the time you did put this in the Pit? A lot of good arguments were made in that thread; perhaps you were too ticked at the time to read them carefully. It might be good to start there first, and then move on to NOAA’s global warming FAQ.
SimonX has it right that “global warming” refers to the global average temperature. There is plenty of room for regional variability in warming or cooling trends.
Either was are am too pissed/frustrated. I’ll reread it. Thanks
Global warming is an increase in the earth’s average temperature. This does not mean that everywhere on Earth, the temperature will increase by a specific amount over each specific time period. Your frost advisory does not demolish the basis of global warming, I’m afraid.
Are you open to the views of experts? The American Meteorological Society says:
Note a key phrase: entire globe. Their conclusion is based on actual data from around the world; I think this trumps one frost-related anecdote.
The American Geophysical Union mentions a “rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.”
Here are some graphs from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Note the upward trend. Also from their report: “An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system.” And gives a specific number: “The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6°C.”
That is a very small increase. And since it’s an average of temperatures over the entire globe for long periods of time, hopefully you can see why a frost advisory can still occur at this time of the year.
"Nobody’s gonna freeze anymore…not with global warming!"
– Andy Kelp, in Donald E. Westlake’s Don’t Ask, 1993
Oh, wait…just in case anyone reads that quotation wrong…Kelp is a fairly famous Contemporary Fictional Doofus.
OK, I’ll accept at face value that we’re going up 1 degree F every century. (Though I’d like to see stats for more than one century). If it’s a global average than is the fear of the polar ice caps melting just a story to bring attention to it? It seems at such a slow rate this wouldn’t be a major cause of concern for mankind. Given even large chunks of ice blocks falling in the ocean, I just don’t see the rapid ocean rise that would wipe out, say, the Eastern Seaboard.
Ironic sidenote. This afternoon there was a tornado 7 miles south of us, now it’ll be cold enough for snow tonight. All in the span of about 18 hours! :eek:
As we say round here-
Don’t like the weather? Just wait a bit.
My cite goes back one thousand years.
It doesn’t need to be a large sea level rise to wipe out large parts of northern Europe, south eastern Asia, etc. And the biggest disaster would be potential changes in global weather patterns. Which could not be predicted more than a few years in advance. The biggest would be if the gulf stream ceased to operate - this would have direct effects on weather (yes weather, not climate) throughout the world.
Uke, it is a sad fact that many, indeed, a majority of American readers are unfamiliar with the limpid existentialism that is Dortmunder. Westlake is a treasure, the utterly professional writer having a heck of a good time. For my money, Andy Kelp’s best line is “He’s going to blame this on me, I just know he will.”
To the matter at hand: “global warming” is too big a set of concepts to be proved or falsified by experiment or data, at best we are going to have to make our decisions based on inference and guess-work. We already have enough suggestive data, enough so that we can say that “glowarm”, while not proven, is nonetheless plausible. Beyond that, we cannot go.
But the kind of steps you would make in response to global warming are wise and forsightful steps regardless. Cheap clean energy is the best answer to all such problems as hunger and poverty. As a human advance, it is more important than vaccination, relativity and feminism all put together.
If we behave as though the threat of glowarm is real, there is an enormous potential for discovery and benefit, even if it isn’t real. And if it is real, and we don’t, there is that one big ass drawback.
Global warming could turn out to be like the Q-bomb in The Mouse that Roared: a dud that saves the world.
Actually, that is roughly the average globe-wide increase that occurred during the 20th century. However, in this century (technically between 1990 and 2100, I believe) the IPCC predicts a rise of 2.5 to 10 F. The uncertainty in the numbers are due to two things: (1) Uncertainty in the science (mainly the various feedback effects that occur in the climate system when CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere rise…such as the increase in water vapor in the atmosphere). There is also a certain amount of uncertainty in the “re-uptake” of these gases by the land and the oceans. (2) Uncertainty in the trends of human greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC has considered a range of plausible scenarios for this growth…some of which are more environmentally-conscious and some of which are less so. [However, I don’t think any of the scenarios reflect a sort of dramatic cut in emissions initiated in order to halt climate change since the scenarios are meant to reflect what would happen if we don’t take such dramatic action.]
If the rise occurs gradually and there are no surprises, a rise near the low end will likely not be too disastrous. However, rises in the medium to high end will have much more dramatic effects. (For comparison, I believe global temperatures during the last ice age were somewhere around 10 F colder.)
And, there are a number of possible surprises that could occur. One is a “sudden shift” in climate that could occur, e.g., if the influx of fresh water from melting glaciers slows the Gulf Stream and other ocean circulations. (Of course, by “sudden”, we don’t mean the ridiculously sudden scenarios as presented in “The Day After Tomorrow” which is science fiction.) Another dramatic effect would be if there is a significant melting of the glacial ice that is on the Antarctic continent and Greenland, which could cause a rise in sea level of several meters…which may not sound like a lot until you realize how much land area there is which is within several meters of sea level (much of Florida, Manhattan, Bangladesh, …) This process of glacial melting is not well-understood and Jame Hansen, one of the fathers of the field, has recently been arguing (on the basis of both the historical record of sea levels in a previous interglacial period that was somewhat…but not a whole lot…warmer than where we are now and some other theoretical arguments about the nonlinearity of the process) that we can’t let the temperature rise too much more if we want to be reasonably confident that we can prevent this scenario from occurring.
Of course, it is also important to realize that such climatic change will continue beyond 2100 (depending, of course, on future emissions) and, in fact, things like sea level rise equilibrate over time scales of centuries and thus will continue to occur for centuries after greenhouse gas levels are stabilized.
We’ve discussed climate change in several threads here in Great Debates before. Here is the most recent one that I know of.
Oh yeah, there was also a very recent thread on sudden climate shifts.
jshore and elucidator,
So I can take from this that global warming is, for now, a scientific hypothesis? There’s no way to argue it since it can’t be disproven. What rubs me wrong on this issue is having the idea rammed down my throat by a myriad of agencies, news outlets, politicians, et al. as absolute fact. Maybe I’m just flying off the handle on it, but I hate theory being purported as fact that we are all facing imminent doom.
For now all I can do is give it as much credence as my own belief that the planet, like everything else in nature, follows cycles. I just can’t ignore that there were no man-made pollutants during the time the Ice Age began to reverse.
As far as The Day After Tomorrow, most of us know it’s factually impossible to happen like that. The problem is, there are so many out there that watch this stuff and take it as gospel.
Anyway, thanks for giving me a different way to look at this. It helps. A little. But it’s still really friggin cold!
It’s certainly more than a mere hypothesis. But even if it were, it could be disproven. That’s what being a scientific hypothesis is all about.
You misunderstand the meaning of ‘scientific theory’. It doesn’t mean ‘something that we can’t prove’ - it means ‘best explanaition of the observations we have made’. The reason global warming is being shoved down your throat is that there is no respectable scientist who does not accept its existence. The only ones arguing against it do so without any of the standard scrutiny of peer-reviewed articles and so on which define modern science.
Ice ages are entirely different things, which occur for entirely different reasons. And yes, the earth does follow ‘cycles’ - but some of the cycles cause mass extinctions, or extinctions of species. Ever seen a live woolly mammoth?
Yes, that is a problem
I’m willing to accept the premise of global warming. As I’ve said, it just doesn’t get me into a tizzy to buy a hybrid car. I’m more in support of hybrids to reduce foreign oil dependancy than any ecological benefits. As far as “something we can’t prove” I should have said that it’s “something we can’t disprove”. And even that, admittedly, is wrong in that anything can be disproven, given the right data.
(Warning: my questions on this subject are subject to change)
Here’s my beef. US groups telling me why I should live and die by the mpg of my car when the US refuses to build an adequate wall to keep out other countries’ pollutants. Isn’t it the same atmosphere for everyone? Why should we pay extra for specially blended gasoline when India and China spew out all the diesel they want with impunity? (no, they don’t all ride bikes). We can do all we want to reduce pollution, and I dare say we do more than most countries in this respect considering the energy use stats. But this amounts to a hill of nothing when taking into factor the pollutants of much larger population countries that don’t follow the same rules.
I could be way off base here, hence the OP. I just don’t see how the US is the major factor in this considering the tech advances in producing cleaner energy.
Again, the Earth has been warming for at least the last 10,000 years coming out of the Ice Age, if not longer. I just can’t see how we (the US) are primarily responsible for this in the 100 years since the Industrial Revolution. Any chance it’s not us, and just a natural cycle that would happen whether we evolved or not?
Back later to answer any questions. This isn’t snarkiness, I really want to know if humans are the scourge of the earth.
Gorilla" The reason global warming is being shoved down your throat is that there is no respectable scientist who does not accept its existence. The only ones arguing against it do so without any of the standard scrutiny of peer-reviewed articles and so on which define modern science."
What total poopoo cakacaka.
If anyone would like to hear some of the other theroies which Gorillaman denies the existance of, may i suggest:
Bjorn Lomborg’s site (http://lomborg.com/index.html),
Waiting for Greenhouse (http://www.john-daly.com/),
NumberWatch (http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/sir_robert_may_annotated.htm)
Junk Science.(http://www.junkscience.com/)
Personally i reckon the climate may be changing, but seeing as no-one ever said it was static , i find it difficult to get exited. The media just exagerates facts which statistically mean nothing. I find it most ammusing that we think we can predict or understand how the earth’s temperature works.
As for Gorillaman’s quote - how does one publish therioes and ideas WITHOUT " the standard scrutiny of peer-reviewed articles and so on which define modern science" ? Isnt that what publishing your theories exposes you to?
SDMB is about fighting ignorance. I think that those who can dismiss alternate ideas about an unproven theory, should really be a bit more open minded.
Sin
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_co2_emi_cap
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=965
With the exception of four small, oil-rich Arab states, the US produces more CO2 per capita than anywhere else. China is no. 79, and India doesn’t even make the top 100. And despite having a fifth of the world’s population, China still only emits two-thirds of the US in total.
It’s not a US-bashing claim that the US is primarily responsible. Hell, we were the ones who started the industrial revolution (which was more like 250 years ago, btw). However, as the richest, and (arguably) most advanced country today, the US is the only one that can effectively lead by example.