Thursday, August 9, 2012

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:
+ NASA What on Earth blog: The New Climate Dice

Reference
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, and R. Ruedy, 2012a: Perception of climate changeProc. 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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