* Mountain forests are migrating upslope as predicted, except faster.
The rapid upward movement of [hardwood forests] indicates little inertia to climatically induced range shifts in montane forests; the upslope shift may have been accelerated by high turnover in canopy trees that provided opportunities for ingrowth of lower elevation species. Our results indicate that high-elevation forests may be jeopardized by climate change sooner than anticipated.
* Invasive species are throwing a party in a warmer Yellowstone.
[W]hile walking across the Lamar last fall, Robert L. Crabtree, chief scientist with the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center in Bozeman, Mont., pointed out a cascade of ecological changes under way. The number of grizzly bears and gophers in the valley has increased, Dr. Crabtree said, an increase supported by the spread of an invasive plant from the Mediterranean that a warming climate benefits.“It’s the early stages of a new ecosystem,” he said, “one that hasn’t been seen here before.”
The plant, Canada thistle, provides food for grizzlies in more than one way but may also be squeezing out native plants that cannot compete.
* “The thickest, oldest and toughest sea ice around the North Pole is melting, a bad sign for the future of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed on Tuesday.”
* Under the north Pacific, a continent-wide of deep water has not breathed air since it sank in the cold, salty zone between Greenland and Canada. This water, part of a global conveyor system called thermohaline circulation, migrates across the sea floor south along the length of the Atlantic, then around Antarctica and north again under the Pacific until it finally rises and breathes again south and west of Alaska. The journey takes 1,000 years, and everywhere small animals in the cold black water thrive on the organic snow that filters down from the sunlit layers above. In the pitch dark everything respires, nothing photosynthesizes, so that by journey’s end deep conveyor water has become nutrient-rich but almost totally anoxic. Thus when offshore winds pull Pacific deep water towards the surface off the coast of Washington and Oregon, small plants in the oxygen-rich surface layers grow like mad but nearly everything in the middle depths will suffocate and die. This is not a warming phenomenon per se; basic thermodynamics predicts that warmer surface water should prevent deep water from mixing with the surface rather than encourage it. In fact, that is also happening right now. Climate warming is thus causing two kinds of ocean dead zones – in the open ocean where fertile deep water has a harder time reaching the surface, and along certain coasts where changing wind circulation, while having the opposite effect, is equally deadly.
But hey, I hear that Al Gore is a big fat jerk. So it evens out.
Ninerdave
I’ve already written off the environment as a campaign issue. We’re all gonna die sometime anyway.
Bubblegum Tate
Also, it was cold somewhere today. Kinda puts your whole “global warming” lie to rest, you silly liberal with your “science” and “observable trends” and “reality-based analysis.”
Asti
Hey, maybe that’s where they can find the bees too!
TenguPhule
I hear there’s Tin in there waters.
DougJ
Once they start getting run over with the snowmobiles they’re letting in the park, that will start to change.
And “numbers of…has increased” isn’t really sound science.
Martin
Big mistake. It’s a huge economic/jobs opportunity if we are wiling to tell big oil to go fuck themselves. It should be the ‘man on the moon’ effort for the decade. Neil Armstrong didn’t to shit for the price of milk, but it was the best gazillion dollars spent in the 60s.
LiberalTarian
So much catastrophe, so little time.
Kat
Martin said: Big mistake. It’s a huge economic/jobs opportunity if we are willing to tell big oil to go fuck themselves.
We would love to tell big oil to go fuck themselves! Unfortunately, they lied us into spending $2 trillion of our money in order to procure the world’s third-largest oil reserve for big oil, so they can continue to bleed us dry for decades to come, until either we starve/freeze/become homeless due to the high price of oil/food/utilities, or climate change causes the next mass extinction of life on Earth, including us — and them.
That last externality will almost be worth it.
mrrichardfeder
Word. Al Gore invented the big fat jerk.
Perry Como
But what about global warming on Mars?
Soylent Green
I work for the scientific wing of a federal agency, the one whose mascot is a bear holding a shovel. Our scientists have been looking into a lot of the changes in natural systems expected to result from climate change. I’m not a scientist and no expert, but here are a couple that aren’t being talked about very much.
For one, big reductions in the water supply to the western half of the United States.
A few degrees change in temperature can radically change how much of the precipitation that falls in the Rockies, Sierras, and Cascades falls as snow and how much as rain. Most of the cities of the West and much of the agriculture depend on snowmelt, which fills our reservoirs all year and maintains our streamflows. Rain runs off and is not, in the semi-arid West, either sufficient or reliable as a water source. But we are seeing shrinking glaciers and snowpacks throughout the West. The cities are largely tapped out in terms of new water sources; if the snow goes, so do they. I don’t see this problem getting any press.
Also, with a few degrees of warming, we’re seeing earlier springs, earlier greenup of vegetation, later autumns. Warmer forests are drier forests, a longer growing season means more fuels, drier forests with higher fuel loads burn hotter and more often. The big fires of recent years are just a taste of the really big fires to come.
But don’t worry, the sea level will come up eventually and put them out.
TenguPhule
Speaking of Hot Air…
The most destructive force in the universe just will not shut up.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Everyone else has the snark covered pretty well, so I’ll deliver the straight line: I can confirm this from personal experience:
I’ve been camping and hiking in pinon-juniper and ponderosa pine forest all over the western US for a long time. The boundary between the two is very noticeable to anyone who spends time in the mtns, and is very sensitive to local micro-climate variations, especially in moisture.
The die off and shift upwards in altitude of this boundary (and also the lower boundary of the pinon-juniper forest) has been dramatic over the last 10 years. The amount of standing dead timber that I’ve seen as a result of this change, in multiple different mtn. ranges, is truly staggering. Even if I’d never heard of global warming, I could still have told you that something was happening, just from watching the trees move.
funfunfun
not only that, but al gore doesn’t live in a naturally eroded cave subsisting on fallen fruit, root vegetables uncovered by earthquakes, and meat from animals that died of natural causes- which is why you shouldn’t pay attention to a thing he says! the man is like the hitler of not being evil. there’s even a best-selling book that says so.
Dennis - SGMM
It’s obvious to any thinking person that Global Warming is a tissue of lies created by tree-hugging liberals to keep us from our G*d Given Right of continuing to do exactly as we have done for so long. That is, to fuck up everything we can lay our hands on for momentary advantage. Look at Chrysler, or Bear Stearns, or the Carlyle Group and then tell me that that these people don’t deserve to keep driving our economic and energy policies.
Ninerdave
Kat, Martin…please don’t make me end my posts with /snark.
DBrown
Great news – the artic has a little more ice cover this year than last (for the dumb asses that think this is big news, in the winter its dark and cold in the artic and ice forms like it always does) – the bad news, the thicker, harder to melt older ice is way, way down (ice 2 – 6+ years old went from 60% of artic ocean coverage to 30% coverage (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7303385.stm.)
Good news, there will be more open water this summer to look for oil in the artic so we can add more C02 to clear away the artic even more.
calipygian
But this was the coldest winter in the northern hemisphere EVAH! More ice in the Arctic this year EVAH! More snow later in the US EVAH! The Sun actually causes global warming, you jerk! You are just a socialist that wants to destroy Capitalism, asshole! Global warming is a gutter religion like Islam and Al Gore is just another pedophile like Muhammad, jerk face!
/wingnut.
clark
But Glenn Reynolds said that it’s cold somewhere.
RSA
I’ll put my personal anecdotes up against your scientific method any day, buddy.
jake
Oh waaah, you picky tree hugger. First you go on about the polar bears dying off. Now you’re upset because grizzly bears are flourishing. Either you like bears or you don’t. Make up your rabbit mind.
Oh wait. I get it. Polar bears are white. Grizzlies are brown. Johan Goldenhosen was right! You are a bunch of liberaleugenofascists!
4tehlulz
AL GORE DID GCC
Civilized Crank
At the risk of sounding like a luddite, all these points show that the climate is changing. It is still a matter of faith that humans are responsible for it.
Kirk Spencer
Civilized Crank,
Sort of true. More accurate is, we know human activity has SOME cause, what we don’t know is how MUCH of the change is due to human activity. That, right there, is the line of honest debate.
Tim F.
So is gravity. Unlike hyper-informed geniuses like you, I don’t know anybody with relevant scientific training (I am one) who has any doubt at all. From where I can see the primary “faith” involved here is deniers’ desperate hope that their precious petrobusinesses and SUV makers will skate without sacrifice.
Punchy
Last name “Crabtree”? As an ecological scientist? Too convienent; I call shenanigans.
And clearly a liberal who hates America.
chopper
all points show that things fall down. it is still a matter of faith that an invisible attractive force called gravity is responsible for it.
all points show that life evolves over time. it is still a matter of faith that natural selection guides it.
Tim F.
That is a fine line of debate, but at some point someone needs to propose a credible alternative mechanism. I can argue that something other than gravity makes the planets keep to their predictable path around the sun, but if I want to be taken seriously I need to propose what that something is. Hand-waving about very patient angels with big wings won’t cut it.
Dork
Obviously this is terrible news for Democrats.
Dennis - SGMM
Of course the fact that many of us, in the course of our commute, in working on the computer, etc. is probably throwing off more heat on a daily basis than a steamboat on the Mississippi has nothing to do with it. Natural climatological trends may well be in play too, but to denigrate humankind’s contribution is to ignore the heat given off by over six billion people. If we all make Rice-a-Roni at the same time on the same day, the world as we know it will end.
DBrown
This statement
“More accurate is, we know human activity has SOME cause, what we don’t know is how MUCH of the change is due to human activity. That, right there, is the line of honest debate.”
Is based on what scientific proof? As I have read (see Real Climate web site) most of the current warming IS caused by man as determined by scientific, peered reviewed empirical evidence. If you have peer review science sites that show otherwise or say human effects do not make up the biggest part of the effect, I will read and learn (and so will most climate scientist.) Please, show scienific, peer reviewed sites that offer proof not opinion; Thanks.
Punchy
Gore snorted alanine?
Kirk Spencer
Tim F., no, you’re going as far the other way.
Look, we know that sun activity has some effect. Yes, the current belief is it’s minimal – depending on cite it’s responsible for as little as 0.3% and as much as 5% of the total change. Assume (just for a moment of argument) that of the numerous other factors suggested, there are ten other that are valid and that they’ve the same range of impact. Thus it is possible — in THIS argument — that as little as 50% of the total effect is due to human activity. (Perhaps I should have put little in scare quotes, but I’d rather keep the example honest.)
See, there have been other contributors identified, including some we know happen but which we’re not sure how to determine total effect. And some we do, it’s just the quantity of effect that’s up to debate.
Of course, there are some with a vested interest in human effect being relatively insignificant to non-existent. Basically, they don’t want to sacrifice – to pay the price to fix it. These are the same type of people who tried to claim the Love Canal did not need saved – and later that it could not be saved. Because saving it meant both direct action on the canal AND action to stop poisoning it which cut into profits and goodies and, well, all that sort of thing. But all that’s a digression.
The demonstrable fact is that one of the contributors to global warming is human activity. It is also demonstrable that our activity is a significant contributor. How significant is debatable – 25%? 50%? 75%? But if we acknowledge that global warming is a bad thing, and that human activity is a significant contributor, then one logical conclusion exists: it is in our power to not be AS significant a contributor. Even if that means a bit of sacrifice of profits and ease.
Grand Moff Texan
It is still a matter of faith that humans are responsible for it.
There are no non-anthropological models that can account for observed climate change phenomenon. That’s not “faith.” That’s science.
.
DBrown
One little bit of totally pointless fact – as per general relativity, gravity does not really exist; mass curves space (and slows time but that is another issue) and planets follow the curve in space; hence, there is no ‘force’ holding the planets around the sun; rather, the planets are just following the curve of space … just hope that clears this important issue up.
Soylent Green
The most persuasive clue that recent climate change is anthropogenic is how quickly it is occurring. The world has seen warming periods before, but they took a lot more time to come and go.
It’s the speed of this one that will be really tough on many species of plants and animals because they won’t have time to shift to more suitable habitats before the stresses kill them off. In a slower, natural climate change (and without our fragmentation of their habitats) they would have a better chance to adapt or evolve.
Punchy
I love Kirk’s argument style. Brilliant.
Shorter KS: “Assume, to make me look good, that there’s a ton of other things that may be causing some other problems bringing a small amount of debatable change in some parts of the climate. But I wont dare name any of these other factors, cuz, they’re just for the sake of the argument, which I’m losing.”
Grand Moff Texan
But Glenn Reynolds said that it’s cold somewhere.
Dead-weight ignorant filth dragging our country down. It’s getting to the point where we can’t afford these people any more.
.
Grand Moff Texan
phenomena, non phemonenon
geeze, I need coffee.
.
Tim F.
Here’s a thought – in addition to gravity I propose that planets are pushed around the sun by angels, UFOs, inertial forces tunneling from an alternate universe, giant invisible pool cues, monolith space babies and brownian motion, plus any number of equally valid forces that others have proposed. Now let’s say without any particular evidence that invisible pool cues account for 2% of planetary motion, and the rest maybe add up to 10%. Is it really reasonable to say that gravity accounts for planetary motion when I just showed that it isn’t the whole story?
In other words, cite your sources.
Kirk Spencer
Punchy? Apparently you stop partway in your reading. It hurts your reading comprehension, let me know. Let me help – please read the whole of the following.
The list of things which contribute to global climate include but are not limited to:
human activity;
solar activity;
volcanic activity;
polar movement;
cyclic rebound (wrongly used to deny other effects as “it’s warmed and cooled before…”);
forest/plains fires.
Each of these has measurable effect on the climate. Well, cyclic rebound isn’t so much an effect as it is an observation with no real knowledge why it happens.
Of these, human activity is the ONE factor over which we have control. Of these, human activity is the only one that wasn’t present in earlier warming cycles which happened at much slower paces. It is reasonable to ASSUME, then, that human activity is the reason it’s increasing at such a rapid pace, and further that we can do something to make it not increase so rapidly.
And that, by the way, is science. We assume something, we put out a test – to disprove, or to refine our fact base on which we’re making our assumptions, and we adjust our assumptions based upon the results of the test.
At this time, based upon what we know, human activity is the reason the climate is warming so swiftly in comparison to how it has done in the past. There are other contributors to global warming, but they are in no greater concentration than they were in the past when warming progressed at a much slower rate.
But human activity is not the sole cause of global warming. It’s just apparently the dominant reason the warming is happening so swiftly, and appears to be moving outside our comfort range.
RSA
You “scientist” types apparently think we can do something about gravity, like preventing things from falling down. Look, if we’re not responsible for the force of gravity, there’s obviously nothing we can do to counteract it.
El Cruzado
The fun thing is, even if humanking had nothing to do with global warming, the sensible readiness policies to be taken to prepare for its effects are 90% the same as the ones aimed at reducing the human contribution to global warming that the most accepted current theories propose. And most of them are also the same ideas that one should think about when realizing that the era of cheap petrol is over for good.
And they all boil down to “stop being so goddamn wasteful”. I guess it’s bad for the free markets or something.
Tim F.
No scientific study has yet found any evidence for a change in solar activity that could even contribute to the change in the climate.
In the short run individual big volcanoes put particulates in the atmosphere, which cools the surface. Only absolutely enormous volcanic eruptions affect the global climate, and it has been a long time since we have had one of those.
In the very long run cycles of volcanic activity force the overall CO2 content of the atmosphere. That would be more interesting if the volcano-driven forcing didn’t change on the scale of millions to tens of millions of years.
Is this a joke? Yes, sure, continental drift contributes to climate. The antarctic circumpolar current allows the continent to become an incredibly cold, climatically isolated place. If we wait fifty million years for Antarctica to wander off its privileged spot then maybe the climate will change somewhat. ZOMG.
Do you mean glacial-interglacial cycles? Those correlate with CO2, so we have a working model for why it happens. Faster events like Younger Dryas and Allerod Bolling are more interesting, but not very encouraging for someone who wants to dismiss the seriousness of heating the Earth. Non-linear responses and fast feedback thresholds keep me up at night.
Those produce particulate matter which cools the surface. We have had a lot of fires lately, so the climate would probably be a small fraction warmer if the Borneo loggers and western US wildfires took a hiatus.
The Other Steve
I’m pro-Global Warming.
I wouldn’t mind seeing shorter winters.
Svensker
Instead of all this science and reasoned argument stuff, can we talk about whether Sully’s ability to be silly and annoying is related to sun spot activity? Or is it just him?
Kirk Spencer
Solar effect cites:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL023849.pdf
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
That’s two. I can probably go digging for more, but most of them are going to say similar – prior to the 17th century, solar activity was probably THE determinant factor in global changes of warmth, and probably still has the same baseline effect, but since there’s been no change it’s probably not the cause of the increased rapidity of change.
Civilized Crank
Look I am not denying that climate change is happening, and I am not denying that we are probably having some effect (I mean we do pollute and all). My point simply is that given the history of earth (4.5 billion years) and the history of huge climate swings that cannot be pegged to man (the Ice Age and the little Ice Age anyone), I am simply reluctant to accept that man alone is responsible for the changes we are seeing. That doesn’t mean we should clean up our act and work towards more renewable sources of energy; that is just smart policy.
Not to mention that measurement of temperature and other indicators was not perfected until last 200 years and there is no real control experiment for the hypothesis. I simply think that climate, like crime, is too complex to isolate a single factor as the root cause for a change in pattern.
Civilized Crank
Argh: “That doesn’t mean we should clean up our act and work towards more renewable sources of energy; that is just smart policy.”
That should be “shouldn’t”.
Tim F.
Nobody thinks that the Earth would not be very, very cold without the sun, so I fail to see where we are disagreeing.
That sounds like a point of faith so strong that it overrides empirical evidence. Watch out for those glass houses.
Kirk Spencer
OK, Tim, you’re misreading me. And I think I see where. Let’s parse, shall we?
First question: was global climatic warmth static prior to the 17th century? Answer: no.
Second question: have we found any times prior to the 17th century where the global temperatures increased as rapidly a they have over the past century? Answer: no.
For the first question – Could human activity have contributed to prior increases and/or decreases in global climatic temperatures? Highly unlikely, particularly in those periods prior to human existence. Therefore, I hypothesize that there are things other than human activity which can affect global climatic temperature.
For the second question – Because the current change is swifter than previous changes, I hypothesize that something has supplemented the previous change engines. As of current knowledge, no known natural engines are acting at greater level than they did in previous events. Therefore, the only known engine that is different is human industrial activity. I hypothesize, then, that this engine is causing an increase in the rate of change of global climatic temperature.
Allow me to summarize.
There is a know history of warming and cooling, creating a set of bounds for rates.
The current rate of warming is outside those bounds.
The causes of earlier rates have not disappeared, and so still apply.
The cause of the current excessive rate is probably human activity.
BUT, human activity is not the cause of all global climatic warming.
Do you see the logic path? The problem isn’t warming per se because (probably) the natural limiters would work to reverse the change as they’ve done in the past — the cyclical rebound. The problem is the SPEED of the current warming which we fear is overwhelming the natural limiters. BUT, denying the existence of non-human engines in regard to warming is a point of blindness.
jrg
Tim would know better than I, but I believe that we’ve got ice cores that give us a pretty detailed record of climate over the last 10,000+ years.
Punchy
Because you listed these in your original post? Where? I know I’m dumb, but am I blind, too?
Kirk Spencer
Aaand, rereading, I see the core issue.
Tim, you appear to be saying the increased rate is ABSOLUTELY caused by human activity. I am saying it’s PROBABLY caused by human activity.
And I think you’ve been dealing with too many pig-headed idiots who insist on absolute knowledge before they change action. Me…
In complex systems, I am extremely hesitant to accept any cause/effect statement as an absolute. But I’m equally willing to live with uncertainty and act on probability. Not 1% (shades of Cheney), but even as low as 70% is more than enough to persuade me to action. And based on what we know at this time, I’d place the probability of human activity being the cause a lot higher than 70%. So, I act.
Kirk Spencer
Punchy, no, because you took my statement and then claimed an opposite conclusion.
The core of my argument is, and was, that the people who say there are other causes of the increased rate of global warming and so changing human activity would be immaterial are being logically fallacious. To use a somewhat unrelated analogy, they’re saying:
If I’m driving on an icy road, slowing down will not help me avoid an accident.
The human activity is controllable and can have an affect on the end result. Refusing to change because of all the things that CAN’T be changed is willing stupidity.
Face
Pretty sure Tim already went through these. Can there be other sources of warming? Yes. Are there currently (i.e., accepted by scientists who publish in peer-reviewd journals)? No.
Ergo, man’s activity appear to be the nearly (hedging) sole cause of such a rapid increase.
Scrutinizer
ZOMG!!!1! You found Ents?
NonyNony
I think people are getting too caught up in the ‘definiteness’ debate. The argument about “how much” we’re impacting the global climate is a dead end argument that people fall into because they just can’t believe that we human beings can affect something the size of a planet. But, really, the “how much” argument is pointless once you get past the point where we have the data to back up that we’re affecting it AT ALL – once you acknowledge that, “how much” is just jibber-jabber.
As I understand the literature, things boil down to roughly two choices[*]:
1) Accept that global climate change is occurring, but that there’s nothing we as human beings can do about it. Don’t bother changing what we’re doing, just hunker down and accept the inevitable global catastrophe that’s coming.
2) Accept that global climate change is occurring and that human activity is some portion of the reason that it’s occurring. Work to eliminate as much of the negative impact of human activity as possible on the change in climate so that, even if there ARE other factors contributing, the overall result is a less severe change than what we’ll see if we don’t mute the impact of human activity.
Either “passive acceptance of our inevitable demise” or “let’s grow the fuck up and see if we can do something” are the viable choices we’ve got at the moment. There’s a continuum of things that can be done if we take point 2 as our starting point. There’s nothing we can do but prepare for the apocalypse if we start from the first point. You’d think with our supposed “can-do” attitude that we’re famous for here in America we’d be all over option 2 like jam on toast, but apparently there are too many of us invested in the idea that the apocalypse is coming and we want it to get here before we die. Or something.
[*] I hate that it does seem to boil down to these two options – that smacks of sloppy binary thinking and it suggests to me that I’m missing something in the debate. And, no, denying that climate change is happening at all is no longer a viable option given the data.
Tim F.
More than that – we have records of varying quality that go back at least one to two hundred thousand years. However, it’s funny that you mention the last 10,000 years, because that period coincides with both a stretch of unusual climate stability and the birth of human civilization. This helps to answer Kirk’s first point:
Actually it was fairly static. The Little Ice Age was primarily a European rather than global phenomenon, and other than that climate was remarkably stable. If it wasn’t then there is no way that we could have developed civilizations fed by reliable food crop harvests.
Scrutinizer
I think humans as a species should make every effort to reduce our impact on the environment. We are obviously one of the few controllable variables in the whole global warming thing. It’s tremendously short-sighted, unhealthy, and just nasty to keep shitting in our own nest.
Still, as a scientist, I have to say that the environment is a tremendously complex system. Even if humans are the largest variable in the system, that doesn’t mean that they are the most important variable, nor does it mean that if we reduced our impact as much as practicable it would necessarily lead to a reduction in global warming in the same proportion. It’s a mistake, I think, to assume that the global warming models we have in place are definitive: for one thing, they don’t seem to be predictive, since actual measures of global warming seem to be much worse than the models predict.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be attacking the consumption/waste problem as aggressively as we can. Just saying that global warming is not necessarily a problem that can be completely solved.
Kirk Spencer
No, not primarily European phenomenon. Cite for example: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-lake-5452.html . Quick summary – during the Little Ice Age in Europe there was a corresponding “wet Little Ice Age” vicinity Kenya, and a corresponding drought vicinity Saharan Africa. This cite is predominately related to rainfall, but corresponding temperature change is mentioned in the main article.
Thus, I stand by the “no” to the question.
The Moar You Know
Goddamn right. Hope you don’t mind that I’m going to start using this very quote about them every chance I get.
Civilized Crank
I am largely on you guys side here, I am just more skeptical and not willing to buy the ‘ZOMG teh humans are killing r planetz!!!111!’ meme whole hog, for the reasons I, Scrutinizer and Kirk pointed out. I still agree on the need to develop alternative energy sources and reduce pollution.
Kirk Spencer
Civilized Crank,
Oh, I’m further to their side than you are. The preponderance of evidence shows that the severe spike is due to human industrial activity. And I’ve not seen any testable hypothesis, much less experimental data, showing that nature will provide a counter beyond killing us off. So I act under the premise – the probability – that if we don’t fix it we’ll die.
My objection is something of a semantical objection – a more pure scientific thought, if you will. Probably vs absolutely, in sum.
Tim F.
I know that you meant this as a castoff comment, but it shows that you misunderstand why serious people worry about climate change.
rawshark
If there’s no gravity why am I still here? Shouldn’t I have been thrown from this spinning sphere?
If you had said Hong Kong or Tokyo instead of Kenya and the Sahara you might have disproved Tim’s point. At least in my mind.
Civilized Crank
Tim,
You are right it was meant as castoff, but it was also a subtle jab at some people on the global warming side whose argument IS that simplistic (obviously none of the people here).
Kirk Spencer
rawshark,
ummmm, ok. There are a number of reasons it’s harder for climate effects to cross the equator than longitudinal lines, but I can handle that too.
Several papers here work, but in particular I’ll cite this. My reason for selecting is it mentions not only evidence in asia, but forestalls another debate by also mentioning evidence found in North America.
It appears likely the little ice age and medieval warm period were global, not regional. I’ve now cited two papers in specific with a general link to several more, all from NOAA.
TenguPhule
Shorter Kirk Spencer for those who don’t want to bother with his long factless posts: I am one heck of an idiot.
rawshark
Since parts of Kenya are below the equator I’ll give you that one. :) But I won’t be so nice in the future but not because of the heat, I’m in phoenix, I can handle heat. Its the humidity that will make me cranky.
Grand Moff Texan
My point simply is that given the history of earth (4.5 billion years) and the history of huge climate swings that cannot be pegged to man (the Ice Age and the little Ice Age anyone), I am simply reluctant to accept that man alone is responsible for the changes we are seeing.
Oddly enough, the people who actually, you know, study this problem don’t have your problem.
An argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy. If that’s your argument, you have no argument.
.
Kirk Spencer
TenguPhule – I was asked for cites, and gave them. Where are yours?
DBrown
rawshark Says,
‘If there’s no gravity why am I still here? Shouldn’t I have been thrown from this spinning sphere?’
Since the Earth/Sun space curve is a mix for you standing on the Earth and all you ‘sense’ is the total space curvature you of course only believe you are being ‘pulled’ towards the Earth’s center (which is not really true, see the next sentence). From the point of view from the sun, you and the Earth are the same mass system and are following a complex path that is both a ‘corkscrew’ like line traveling a circular course around the sun (Earth traveling its orbit around the Sun and the Earth’s surface rotating around its axis). Sorry, there is no force to ‘throw’ you off the Earth so that is not even an issue to address. Relativity may or may not be a correct theory (it fails relative to a very complex idea about accelerated charge conservation in E&M but even PhD’s argue about that) but it is still the best model of gravity.
DBrown
rawshark: Forgot to add – excellent question.