Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

I missed something there, Walt...
What is a green cock ?

Sure, we have had warming before. But the current 10-year warming trend is, by far, the most extreme in recorded history.

Does everyone who supports Global Warming work in advertising ? The "by far the most extreme"...so out of all the extremes (how many extremes is that, by the way ?) this is the BY FAR the MOST extreme.



10 years is meaningless.

"Recorded History"...is not an impressive amount of time. It is also inaccurate. Data is not available since the start of history. Accurate world wide data is less than 50 years old. The earliest data available is around the time of the Napoleonic Wars when French scientists kept records where the armies went, and the British ship's logs recorded the weather but this was not world wide data. So 200 years ago marks the start of sketchy observations. Add to that the research done in ocean mud, tree rings, oxygen isotopes from ice samples (all of which is interpreted data, not an observation) and we go back increasingly unreliably to about 400,000 at the maximum. A trend of 100,000 years is reasonable and should be considered if there is accurate data. The climate is linear data and anyone who was given a 10 year trend out of 4.6 Billion years and asked to make a prediction would laugh, except this is Global Warming and science does not apply.

All this observed and interpreted data has found there is a trend that we are getting warmer from when there was a lot of ice to someday when there will be none, but we knew that anyway. It is a guess that man has contributed to this warming, and to support the guess carbon was blamed. If half the clowns out there posing as scientists and their hysterical supporters who know nothing were honest they would admit it was a guess. There is not enough data. This guess may be right. But it is not science to say it is fact. When people show a baseline zero and say it is getting warmer, where did they get the zero baseline from ? Previous hot peaks imbetween Ice Ages ? During Ice Ages perhaps ? There is very sketchy information about previous times.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age<br />

When we come out of this ice age, there will be no ice and it will be warmer than now. My apologies to all those who wanted to feel Quixotically powerful and save the world because it is fashionable, but you will have to find some other quest to tilt your lance at.

Advocate, You bring rational thinking into this discussion, but the biggest problem I have with this topic is "the most extreme in recorded history."

How long is that recorded history?

AVERAGE ANNUAL GLOBAL TEMPERATURE HAS BEEN DECREASING FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif

Average Annual Global Temperature 1850-2009

For those who are really interested, from the AMSER Science Reader Monthly:
Carbon Trading: Environmental Godsend or Giant Shell Game?

It seems educators are free to brainwash children, be it Nazism, Communism, Capitalism, or Environmantalism. Have we learnt nothing from the past ? I am angry that at times on this forum I have been treated like a Jew or a nigger. I have been called a liar, a traitor, ignorant, and whats worse at times I have responded in kind. I have to say everyone is entitled to their opinion, my only objection is the claim that man-made Global Warming is supported by science. It is not. It is supported by some scientists. There are many scientists from many fields who are alarmed at the lack of judgement being shown in this field. If you like science and you want to spend your life doing research, would you prefer to do it in poverty or in comfort ? And if you can get away with some very dubious studies because the peer review is on side, then why not ?

Having the environmentalists on your side is almost as bad as having the UFOlogists or the Ghost Whisperers supporting you. Whilst this crowd could make a very interesting dinner party, they do not have science on their side but I stress they are entitled to an opinion and may be right. MAY BE.


Does anyone point out the assumptions ?

Assumption 1. Global Warming is man made.
Assumption 2. The time is right to do something to correct Global Warming.
Assumption 3. The correct course of action has already been determined.
Assumption 4. Any non-believers should be vilified.

I will say it again...Global Warming can not be proven to be man made...it is a guess. To say most scientists have all got on board with it therefore it is science is like saying most bus passengers have got on board a train therefore it is a bus.

October 23, 2009, 2:43 pm
Weekend Opinionator: Are Americans Cooling on Global Warming?
By Tobin Harshaw

Americans are worried about global warming. We know this for many reasons. We know it because “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar; because Al Gore’s popularity has soared since he left the vice presidency; because the House and Senate are working feverishly on laws to limit greenhouse-gas emissions; and mostly because there are so many books from skeptics accusing environmentalists of having completely snookered the American public.
Democrats begin a push on cap-and-trade laws just as a new poll shows a sharp decline in fears of rising temperatures.

Need more proof? Take it from the very top " President Obama, Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy " when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim " make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.”

What about them? “We are seeing a convergence. The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized.”

Hmmm, for people being marginalized by a consensus, there suddenly seem to be a whole lot of them, at least according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem " 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008 …

Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Just 53% of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75% who did so in April 2008. Republicans, who already were highly skeptical of the evidence of global warming, have become even more so: just 35% of Republicans now see solid evidence of rising global temperatures, down from 49% in 2008 and 62% in 2007. Fewer Democrats also express this view " 75% today compared with 83% last year.

Cue the rejoicing on the right. Here’s John Hinderaker at PowerLine:

That 36 percent is pretty remarkable, given the massive propaganda effort that has been mounted over a period of decades by the big-government side. It suggests that the public is becoming more knowledgeable about climate science …

A rational citizen, confronted with the current economy and the Democrats’ plan to impoverish us all with a multi-trillion-dollar tax on energy, would take a hard look at the evidence to see whether anthropogenic global warming is a) a reality, or b) a hoax ginned up to justify a massive federal government takeover of the economy that will shift trillions of dollars from ordinary citizens to the federal coffers and to companies and organizations with close ties to the Democratic Party. A lot of rational citizens are concluding that the right answer is b).

Still, there are plenty of grievances, and for Hinderaker they stem from something Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said to Dina Cappiello of the Associated Press: “It’s a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instill a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public.”

“Actually,” responds Hinderaker, the ‘lobby groups’ are nearly all on the other side. I’ve seen no reliable statistics, but would guess that more than 90 percent of the money in the global warming game is pro-AGW. The federal government alone has parceled out billions of dollars to “scientists” who are willing to toe the party line. Add to that the public schools, virtually every newspaper, all of the television networks and the Associated Press, and it is something of a miracle that so many Americans have been able to figure out that they are being lied to. It’s almost enough to restore your faith in democracy.”

Vox Day, the blogger at Vox Popoli, anticipates the left-wing response:

Brainwashing and appeals to scientific authority only go so far when Joe Public’s car is buried by snow in early October. No doubt the true believing scientific community will respond with calm reason and logical persuasion, by which of course I mean that we can look forward to the usual suspects shrieking about how stupid everyone is for daring to think for themselves and wistfully dreaming of PhDoctocracy.

“Not everything in the poll is bad news for those that favor capping U.S. emissions,” notes The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Power. He explains:

According to the survey, a majority (56%) of Americans think the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change, while 32% say that the United States should set its own standards. And half of Americans favor setting limits on carbon emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if this may lead to higher energy prices.

On the other hand, more than half (55%) say they haven’t heard about so-called “cap and trade” legislation being considered in Congress. (Then again, Sen. John Kerry says he doesn’t know what “cap and trade” means, either.)

This paradox leads Meredith Jessup at TownHall to accuse Republicans of failing to take advantage of the shifting public attitudes:

With all this growing skepticism about global warming, you’d think support for cap-and-trade would drop. Not on Capitol Hill!

And despite the number of Americans who doubt the influence of global warming, for some reason half of the country still favors setting limits on carbon emissions, even though it will result in drastically higher energy prices. This phenomenon seems to be due to lack of knowledge of the issue:

Just 14% say they have heard a lot about the so-called “cap and trade” policy that would set carbon dioxide emissions limits; another 30% say they have heard a little about the policy, while a majority (55%) has heard nothing at all. The small minority that has heard a lot about the issue opposes carbon emissions limits by two-to-one (64% to 32%).

Hopefully the RNC reads these numbers and takes away this important lesson: knowledge is power when it comes to cap-and-trade.

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, whose writing often incurs the wrath of environmentalists, thinks there is a clear political message here for environmentalists:

Remarkably, only liberal Democrats have shown an increase in concern on the issue, as shown below. meanwhile, it has become of diminishing seriousness for just about every other group of Democrats. What this means is that continued efforts to intensify concern over global warming could have the effect of turning this issue into a being perceived solely as a liberal cause (more so than it is already perceived to be) and alienate the rest of the voting populace, the vast majority of which do not consider themselves to be liberal Democrats.

One reason to stop focusing on what people think about the science of climate change is that a majority of the public supports action on emissions (shown below) and well as international cooperation on climate change (not shown). The policy challenge is thus to design policies that can be effective given the strong political support that has existed on this topic for some time. The realities are that support is about as strong as it is likely to be, and really hasn’t changed much over a decade or longer. Efforts to make climate change a top line issue will inevitably backfire. For some these facts may be frustrationg, but they are the reality of the issue.

Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress feels that Pew erred in saying the decline is “across party lines.” “But you should look at the magnitudes,” he explains, “the Republican line has fallen way further, and from a lower base, than the Democratic line. This is probably a rationalizing voter example where increased salience of the issue is bringing more Republicans into line with the beliefs espoused by their party’s leaders.”

Yglesias also takes issue with this comment form Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma: The more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade. And this explains quite clearly why Democrats don’t want the public to know about it.” The blogger’s reply: “These are curious uses of the terms “know” and “learn” which are generally reserved for instances in which people form true beliefs. On the specific issue of cap and trade, the evidence has always been that the term “cap and trade” is barely in circulation outside the Beltway. Public support for clean energy legislation under different descriptions tends to be high. You can get poll results as good at 72 percent in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act under one favorable description.”

Cappiello, the Associated Press writer, also talked to a global-warming die-hard who seems to think denial is the appropriate response:

Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant " at around 80 percent " in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993 was surprised by the Pew results.

He described the decline in the Pew results as “implausible,” saying there is nothing that could have caused it.

Well, plausible or not, it can hardly be said that the new study is a total outlier " consider this conversation with Gallup’s Frank Newport that U.S. News’s Paul Bedard recounted in May:

He admits that it’s counterintuitive, but Gallup Poll Editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is winning. “It’s just not caught on,” says Newport. “They have failed.” Or, more bluntly: “Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore’s losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned.” What the public is worried about: the economy. Newport says the economy trumps the environment right now, a strong indicator that President Obama’s bid to put a cap-and-trade pollution regime into operation isn’t likely to be politically popular.

That’s not to say people aren’t passionate about the issue. But it’s the direction of their passion that will disappoint Gore. Newport says that some 41 percent believe global warming claims are exaggerated, and “that’s the highest we’ve seen.” Ask people to name their biggest concerns, and just 1 percent to 2 percent cite the environment. “The environment doesn’t show up at all,” says Newport.

“It’s Al Gore’s greatest frustration,” says Newport. “We seem less concerned than more about global warming over the years. . . . Despite the movies and publicity and all that, we’re just not seeing it take off with the American public. And that was occurring even before the latest economic recession.”

He adds: “As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data.”

Jim Hoggan of desmogblog.com is pretty sure that the sheep are being led astray by the usual big-money suspects:

As I explained to the Guardian newspaper today, “a big part of this problem is this campaign to mislead Americans about climate science. This is a very sophisticated group of people who know how to create doubt and confusion and they have done a very good job of it.”
This downturn in public understanding of the climate crisis confirms that the corporate investment in climate confusion is paying a dividend. The public confusion campaigns launched by ACCCE, the Chamber, National Association of Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and a host of others, are all deliberately targeted at moving the dial on public opinion.

These Astroturf groups have set a clear and specific goal of muddying the waters, and this poll shows that their strategy is working. Front groups and lobbyists for dirty industry have effectively sown the seeds of confusion within the American public.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, the pleadings of nation’s like the Maldives and villages in the Arctic which are literally being wiped off the map by rising sea levels, and siren calls from the international community for action to address climate change, Americans are still questioning whether it is real or not.

Shocking, isn’t it? Not if you know what the industry lobbyists and front groups have been up to for the past 20 years.

Tom Yulsman at the Center for Environmental Journalism’s blog looks at the numbers a bit more closely and doesn’t like what he sees:

In the Pew poll, 85 percent of people said they had heard only a little or nothing at all about the cap-and-trade policy now being considered in Congress to tackle global warming. And in what may be an ominous development for Democrats pushing cap-and-trade plans in Congress, it seems that public support for the policy seems to be built on extremely shaky ground. That support is actually correlated with lack of knowledge about the policy’s details, with more than 50 percent of those who know little or nothing about them saying they favor a cap on emissions of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the small minority of people who have heard a lot about capping emissions actually oppose the policy by a two-to-one margin.

This can mean a number of things. One possibility is that those most inclined to dislike government action on global warming are the ones most likely to have sought out details about cap-and-trade. Another is simply that the more Americans know about the policy, the less they like it.

Or, as Truthdig’s PZS would have it, perhaps it means that Americans are simply idiots:

In just three short years, Americans have gotten 20 points dumber. That’s if you count a belief in the climate crisis, and the mounting science behind it, as a sign of brains.

Blame the people who popularized global warming as a phrase. The ice caps may be melting and half of California has been on fire, but if it’s a relatively cool summer, everyone’s a skeptic.

To be fair to the land of the free and home of the creationists, most of us still believe there’s “solid evidence that the earth is warming,” but that number was much higher, 77 percent, in 2006. Whatever you’re doing, Al Gore, it isn’t working. Step on it.

Well, it sounds like PZA would be right at home “PhDoctocracy” posited by Vox Day.

For those of us in the real world, however, it seems like talk may soon turn into action (or inaction). Beyond the Obama speech, here are some signs that we aren’t so befuddled by the economy as to have forgotten the climate:
the impending release of the Senate’s newest version of its climate bill, on which the Environment and Public Works committee is to hold hearings next week; the Environmental Protection Agency’s new report on the cost of such legislation; the decision by Creigh Deeds, the struggling Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, to dump cap-and-trade; and the fact that Ed Markey, the House Democrat leading the charge for the legislation, is off to Copenhagen to lay the groundwork for the international summit meeting in December. Not that this issue, 4.5 billion years in the making, is going to be resolved overnight, but it would seem to be time for that majority of Americans who responded that they knew “nothing” about cap-and-trade to think about picking a side.

Note: Those who know and love the blogosphere well are probably aware that there were two major Web brouhahas this week involving global warming claims; as both involved parties affiliated with The Times, I chose not to discuss them, as to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. If however, you want to catch up, one involved Rush Limbaugh (him again) and Times reporter Andrew C. Revkin (see here and here); the other pitted Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner of my sister blog Freakonomics against enviro-blogger Joe Romm, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the economist J. Bradford DeLong (see here and here and here and here and here).

UN report says that GW is man-made and that it will continue despite efforts to control man-made pollution.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249659,00.html

Advocate, That's the reality. Look at China and India, the biggest growth countries with almost 50% of the world population buying more cars and using coal to fuel their energy. There's no stopping them. Even with the world economy in distress, those two countries are building car factories and their use of energy continues to grow. The rest of the developed countries can't compete with them on the usage of raw materials and energy. We are cutting down more forests, and our ability to absorb carbon is being reduced at the same time as the growth in pollutions.

GW is a good theory, but not in practical terms.

I've no idea why you responded such to my post. (And to be honest: I suppose you know nothing about me - or any other on this forum - re. your "oppinion" about quote "been treated like a Jew or nigger" end of quote.

I think, however, to compare environmentalism with "UFOlogists" or "Ghost Whisperers" clearly proves a bit you: you don't like nature, the past, the future, your neighbour, the next generations, God's creations in general - but only yourself.
Nothing bad with that per se.

Advocate - kindly examine the graph to which you're responding. It's not a 10-year scale, it's a 600,000-year scale, and the NOAA is as reliable a source as you get. Even visually you can see the trend (first derivative) and the rate of change (second derivative) starting 600,000 years ago - and if you want additional granularity (of necessity much detail is lost in graphs at those scales) you can find them in the NOAA datasets.

The UN also said all those nations would be better off if they were independent from colonialism. Many were benefiting from colonialism in ways difficult to measure. Very few were being exploited to the extent India was. The arguers for independence became dictators and reinforced tribalism, a form of Racism, something that colonialism was accused of. The UN stood back and watched massacre after massacre. Obviously they are an organisation that cares. If you want credibility dont cite the UN.

Then I will provide you with ideas. You gave a reference for people to teach children a political point of view, something a professional educator would be loath to do but something that dictatorships trying to emotivate people and have their own way without opposition are very fond of.

Is the reciprocal true ? You know everything about me ? Why is this ESP of yours only yours ? You dont like to be associated with "UFOlogists" or "Ghost Whisperers" but you flamboyantly use for ESP powers for evil, Mr Super Hero.
To silence a different opinion, the Nazis, Communists, Capitalists, and Environmentalist all vilify people who do not believe. Several posts referring to me have been removed, but some remain because I was only called a liar, a traitor and other "minor" insults. Violence is a response to fear. People have been afraid of others in the past, using terms like nigger, and Jew ( a religious belief, but said like the ultimate insult because everyone "believed ").
May I paraphrase what you said ?
" I think, however, to compare NAZISM with "UFOlogists" or "Ghost Whisperers" clearly proves a bit you: you don't like nature, the past, the future, your neighbour, the next generations, God's creations in general - but only yourself."

I can almost see you staring off into the distance with your hand on your heart as you say the sacred word, "environmentalism". Nazism was trying to save humanity. Environmentalism is trying to save humanity. Both do not care how they do it. One greenpeace captain said he could easily kill a human being to save a whale. Non believers must be eliminated. There is too much at stake.

The process is very familiar to students of history. First the strong almost religious belief, then the rationale, then the attack of non-believers, then the justification, which increases the religious belief, and so on.....

The UN has been wrong on a number of things. But it has also been right in most cases.

I agree but the point I was making was given their track record for selfish behaviour that caused the deaths of many, they are not an authoritative source. Proof does not have to be suspended because the UN believes something. They are a political body. When was the last time you said a politician supported something so it must be true ?

A friend has a doctorate of science and has spent all his life researching climate and weather. At the end of his career, his Doctorate of Philosophy (Science) was changed to honour him. He now holds a Doctorate of Science, a rare honour indeed. He believes Global Warming is caused by man but will say point blank it can not be proven. IT IS A GUESS. He never once asked me to take him at his word. He is too great a man for that and his love of science is too deep. He said for me to form my own opinion. He is an educator who knows full well what was done in the name of science by the Nazis, and exactly how they achieved their suspension of criticism.

It is more than just a "guess." It is a very educated guess backed by a mountain of evidence accepted by thousands of scientists, including ones who are leaders relative to the latest science. It is hardly a coin flip.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb
As of December 20, 2007, more than 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries have voiced significant objections to major aspects of the alleged UN IPCC "consensus" on man-made global warming.