Why the Mail on Sunday was wrong to claim global warming has stopped... Ice cold debate

Why the Mail on Sunday was wrong to claim global warming has stopped | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

The Guardian comes back with a strong argument against the David Rose article in the Daily Mail on Oct 20, 2012.  David argues that there has been only a very small increase in global surface temperatures for the 16 years ending in 2011. Not as much, certainly, as expected, by forecasts.

First, no one anywhere can deny climate change. Higher highs, lower lows, and more extreme temperatures, pretty much everywhere. All of the places I travel (in the US and most of the places I read about and talk to people from) have been exhibiting extremes almost every year. Often the 100-year extremes have been reached a couple times over the last couple years!:-) Ouch.

The chilling goosebumps should come out on anyone who starts to check out the arctic ice caps. Much of the north pole was navigable this summer by ship, something that no researchers forecasted last century, they expected it about 2050 or later. The recession of the Arctic ice seems to be happening at a faster and faster pace.

James Hansen gives a simple but visual image of the warming of our planet. See this blog post here.

Richard Muller, the last skeptic of the climatologists, recently published research that was funded by the right-leaning Koch brothers. (I refuse to call them "conservative" because it debases the word.) In the first report Muller found that there is, in fact, global warming. In the second report he found that humans appear to be almost entirely the cause.

Carbon Dioxide has increased in the atmosphere in a direct match with the industrialization of the world and also with the increase of the population. But, if you look at the earth's systems as, well, systems, it is impossible to believe the the massive buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere would have not effect... And that many of those effects would not be adverse.

Given that we know CO2 has a long persistence, say 100 years, in the atmosphere, it should make a sane man nervous... very nervous.

Ignoring the facts, is a long distance from being helpful in any way.


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NASA GISS: Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global Warming. (It's perception, Toto)

NASA GISS: Research News: Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global Warming:

Op Ed: We must stop rolling the dice on Global Warming.  (1 page)
Full Paper/Presentation: Perception of climate change. (5.8 mb, PDF)

James Hansen (& Soto & Ruedy, 2012) from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Exploration just completed a big study on world temperature change. This research uses simple, straight forward stats, and our friendly bell-shaped curve from elementary statistics. (It doesn't use the complicated weather modeling with the spaghetti lines that almost no one really understands.)

This is the same Hansen who first really started warning us that the climate has changed in the 1980s...
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

The graphics are powerful. Watch the the bell-shaped curve of temperatures move distinctly and precipitously to the right, compared to a "normal" 10-year period 30 years ago. And because of more extreme weather, the bell curve has flattened out.

If you are a denier of global warming, you will be very sad about this report.
If you haven't made up your mind about global warming, you shocked by this revelation. And very sad about this report.
If you've been a siren about global warming, this will make you want to cry. But it will also provide some of the most powerful materials ever, to go sound the alarm.

Now your next conversation with God, or a mere mortal, for that matter, might go like this.
"I'm sorry Sir, the patient is getting sick, and running a fever... and the fever is rising...  Yes, there's about 7.1 billion people who are inadvertently, but consistently, poisoning the patient.. No, I'm sorry they don't seem to want to stop doing what they're doing... Why not? ... Well, its a mater of perception!"

Before reading this report consider this. Hansen et al. include the scorcher of a year in 2011 (think Texas and Oklahoma drought), but do not include the record-setting 2012 mega-scorcher.

Related Links:

+ GISS Science Brief: The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change 

+ NASA What on Earth blog: The New Climate Dice

+ GISS Science Brief: A Common Sense Climate Index: Is Climate Changing Noticeably?

+ GISS Surface Air Temperature Analysis

Reference
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, and R. Ruedy, 2012a: Perception of climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., doi:10.1073/pnas.1205276109. Early draft posted as "Public perception of climate change and the new climate dice", arXiv.org:1204.1286.

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