As for global warming, it is essentially incontrovertible (as Colibri has manifestly demonstrated) that the global average temperature is increasing. How much of this is due primarily to human intervention isn’t entirely clear, although the evidence weighs heavily on industrial society at a substantial culprit via the increase in greenhouse gases. The models of climate behavior are far from complete–predictions of temperatures in the troposphere and stratosphere are significantly off actual measurements–and are insufficient to make an absolute prognosis of future conditions, but the melting of glaciered water, rise of ocean levels, disruption of currents and airstreams, and resulting impact upon regional biospheres is inevitable.
This is nothing new, of course, and has been endured by the Earth and its inhabitants many times in the past as part of the natural evolution of the planet, but it may have serious and detrimental impacts on our ability to maintain the underpinnings of civilization (or, at least what passes for it in Lower Manhattan) and of course result in the perhaps premature extinction of many species, causing bright-eyed and idealistic young turks (and a few of us older folk) to bemoan the loss if irreplacible-in-our-lifetime coral reefs and rain forests. On the other hand, little treatment is paid to the potential benefits of global warming, including the opening of many areas to more effective agriculture, which could potentially offset the costs of damage and loss due to global warming (though not replace lost species or mitigate the spread of disease). The natural assumption that “change is bad” is itself an inherently, if understandibly, conservative position. It’s entirely possible that future generations may regard the warming trend and climate change–aside from some aggrevating storm activity–to be a net positive for humanity. Certainly we’d be hearing much less from New Yorkers about how important and central their city is.
The technical issue of the effectiveness of agreements like the Kyoto Protocol is up for debate–there are many reputable scientists who argue that it is either ineffectively weak, counterproductive in the economic restrictions it would impose, or somesuch–but the fact of global warming and some kind of accompanying climate change is not. To argue differently based upon merely a political bent harkens back to the good old days of Lysenkoism. Dosvedanya, gospodin.
Moving this to Great Debates. I think this may allow all participants to air it out a bit better.
As my contribution, I’m going to the library today to read the Fortune article in the original. I think I’m gonna find that the 2.7 degree drop in temperature from the 40’s to the early 1970’s occured in Iceland, not global.
Well, you read everything and said you could answer these questions regarding global warming / cooling. Anyhow, continuing along a sceintific path here, please explain the dramatic temperature cooling in the period starting about 1580 AD. Maybe you could also explain some of the warming periods prior to that as well … Moberg / NOAA …
I listen to everyone, but my job is to assess data based on probability / statistical methods, including publishing peer reviewed articles on these techniques.
This issue should not be a debate. There are extensive amounts of data indicating the variablility of global temperature. This data can be analyzed using various statistical / probability methodologies to assess the degree of significance. The principle question is, in fact, not a debate, but are the current global temperature trends significant at a reasonable level of confidence?
The consensus opinion of climate scientists today, as expressed in the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (the IPCC as cited above), is that neither the so-called Little Ice Age nor the Medieval climate optimum were comparable in magnitude nor scope to the climatic changes taking place now. In contrast to these events also, the present warming shows very clear links to increases in global levels of CO2, rather than to changes in sunspot activity or volcanism.
This displays almost complete misunderstanding of how science works. You quote two scientists who advanced a particular hypothesis 30 years ago. Their predictions have not been borne out by the collection of additional data and by improved climate models. Do you seriously believe that every single scientific paper is 100% correct in its predictions? If so, why do you think that hundreds of leading US scientists are so wrong today?
Bryson was actually seems to have been correct about the mechanism. However, he was wrong about the long-term trend because of inadequate data. Aerosols apparently were responsible for the slowing of the warming trend in the late 1940s, but their effect has since been overcome by increases in C02.
Schneider was correct about the mechanisms too, but wrong in his calculations about their relative impact.
In contrast to the work of these two individual scientists, present scientific opinion on global warming - that it is unequivacally occurring, and is due at least in part to human impacts - represents the consensus of thousands of climate scientists throughout the world.
From the same article I linked to earlier on “Global Cooling”:
This is rather scary. Why do you show no apparent ability to assess data here?
I don’t have anything substantive to add, but I want to give props to Colibri for his efforts. I doubt if anything, anything at all, will convince the OP, but I’m finding this thread and the links pretty useful. I don’t think I’m the only one.
Possibly, but warming is not the sole effect. Climate changes may include decreases or increases in rainfall that could make substantial areas less suitable for agriculture or habititation. (In some areas increased temperatures today are resulting in higher evaporation and hence less available water for irrigation.) Whatever the case, even if the changes are positive in the long-term, they are bound to cause substatial economic losses and social disruption in the short term.
I recall the 1963 science fiction story by Alan Danzig, The Great Nebraska Sea. In it the entire Great Plains area of the United States founders in an enormous earthquake in 1973, creating a great inland sea. The epilogue, written from the perspective of 100 years in the future, describes what a positive development this seeming disaster has been. Of course, at the time it wasn’t much fun for Oklahomans.
“They are.”? I have no clue what you just said, but if you have a computation of the recent global warming sttistical significance based on historical variations, at let’s say a 95% confidence level … please provide. watching
