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Climate Change Threatens Pacific, Arctic Conflicts
CANBERRA - Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.
An Australian army truck is unloaded from a landing craft in Dili, in 2006, to boost an international peacekeeping force in East Timor. Australia's military has warned that global warming could create failed states across the Pacific as sea levels rise and heighten the risk of conflict over resources, according to a report. (AFP/File) A confidential security review by Australia's Defense Force, completed in 2007 but obtained in summary by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, said environmental stress had increased the risk of conflicts in the Pacific over resources and food.
But the biggest threat of global conflict currently lay beneath the Arctic as melting icecaps gave rise to an international race for undersea oil and gas deposits, it said.
"Environmental stress, caused by both climate change and a range of other factors, will act as a threat multiplier in fragile states around the world, increasing the chances of state failure," said the summary, published in the Herald on Wednesday.
"The Arctic is melting, potentially making the extraction of undersea energy deposits commercially viable. Conflict is a remote possibility if these disputes are not resolved peacefully," the assessment said.
The "Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict" summary report was obtained under Freedom of Information laws which allow Australians to access official documents provided it does not hurt national or government security.
The military refused to release the full report because it could harm Australia's defense capability and international relations, the Herald said.
Australia is a close U.S. ally and the report said climate change would likely "increase demands for the Australian Defense Force to be deployed on additional stabilization, post-conflict reconstruction and disaster relief operations in the future."
Australian soldiers are already deployed alongside U.S. and European counterparts in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as in East Timor and Solomon Islands in the Pacific.
The defense analysis said rising sea levels would affect nations and islands with low-lying coastlines, and may lead to increase in refugees from vulnerable Pacific islands.
It could also lead to more illegal immigration and fishing, bringing disputes over access to scarce food resources. That could mean an increasing presence north of Australia by the country's navy, the report said.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Show AllFor over sixty years I've had a recurring dream. Apparently others have had the same dream as there have been books written, and movies made based on the same premise as my recurring dream - the fall of civilization, and the survivors who struggle to continue to survive. While I've been one of those survivors in my dream, I know that I won't be, at least not in this lifetime. I'd say there's a very good chance that I could be one in the next life though.
All the scientific knowledge, all the stories of what's ahead of us, all the proof that's put before us isn't going to made any difference. We all know why. Just as we all know what brought us to this cliff's edge.
I wouldn't get too excited about this article intent. We are entering our normal cooling cycle, and with that the Arctic will have lots of ice to deter those searching for more oil/gas etc.
Makes only great sense to wean ourselves off oil as it has become to disruptive economically to be substainable.
I forsee a lot of solar steam, wind turbine fields etc. An exciting time to be alive!
Good grief. Enough with the 'cooling cycle' already.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt you know.
Most of the 'evidence' you have brought up is plain false. Some is just harping on minor effects and ignoring major ones, much of the rest is designed purely to confuse those who aren't actually paying close attention.
Yes, I've looked at your links, and references and every time I dig a bit deeper I find them either mis-representations of climate scientists, flawed, or promoting statements that are simply untrue.
Please explain why you choose to ignore the experts and the evidence!
Are you just a conspiracy theorist? Or is there some deeper flaw?
Are you a creationist? A flat-earther?
Either of those would really explain a great deal.
nah, just a wanker.................
ignore.....................
Interesting how the summary ignored the great threat climate change and sea level rise has to Australia itself, which could make it a failed state. Note also the implied racism of needing to prevent "illegal" immigration as people are forced to flee their atolls for higher ground. Previous experience proves Australia to be a very violent toward people of color seeking such an escape. Soon, the Great Barrier Reef will be mostly dead (it's about 30% dead already), and the overpopulated southeastern corner of the island will become untenable due to alteration of precipitation and related climatology. I find it amazing that with all the available evidence we still have denilaists, but then there are still far too many Creationists and over a billion people who believe in talking snakes despite the many facts showing the falsity of their beliefs, so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised.
I notice that the US military has a similar kind of vision.
You almost get the impression that climate disaster, indeed disaster and misery of any kind, is their wet dream.
There is Nothing hot lead and cold steel won't solve eh?
physicscitizen:
Show me where my logic or facts are wrong. I am still on the cooling phase, as the evidence is there.
WE are cooling folks, and if you don't beliefe the Hadcut temp graphs....now......wait a few more years and you might.
"I am still on the cooling phase, as the evidence is there."
I kinda tend to agree. Here where I live we usually have anywhere from 30 to 60 days of hundred or better temperatures. In the last five years we probably haven't had thirty days hotter than a hundred. We had one summer where the temperature never made it to a hundred. If this is global warming then bring it on.
Rickster
I have not made an untrue statement of any kind. If you can show me that anything I have written is false, I would like to know.
it seems to me, sigurdur, that what physicscitizen posted was that you are "promoting statements that are simply untrue" and that "most of the evidence you have brought up is plain false." your statements might not be untrue, but your propoganda is lacking in the cold dose of reality department which will soon hit you over the head, allowing you to float away on the nearest developing ice sheet. don't forget to take your "hadcut temp graphs" with you.
He ask to be shown which statements he made is untrue. I've seen a lot of evidence that supports both side of the equation. I'm beginning to have my doubts about global warming. Too many people are making statement about global warming without any links to data to support their opinions. When they do supply a link and I follow it they seem to have left out some information. Intentionally? I don't know. I do figure this though based on what I've read nobody knows for sure if it's really happening or not.
I believe even the scientist have doubts.
Rickster
The statement about scientists having their doubts is wholly incorrect.
You might find one or two. If you do then find out who funds them.
Indeed, even Shell and Exxon CEO's now reluctantly admit that climate change is real AND that human beings are the cause. And they continue to back anybody, scientist or not, who tries to ignore the facts.
The NASA folks are saints in my view. They were persevering under a hostile government. The Bush administration threatened people's jobs and put up a former campaign organizer who had lied about his college degree on his resume' to act as the political vetter for all scientific press releases from NASA about climate change. They tried to Gag Hanson and politicize everything that office did or said.
Yet they persevered despite these threats.
Why would they do this if they were just making it all up? Or even if the evidence was uncertain? Why would you risk losing your sweet government job if the data are only marginally in support of a conclusion that your boss doesn't want to hear? Indeed, if you decided to down-play climate change, during all of the last decade, you could be assured of sweet pay-outs from the oil industry.
none of this makes any sense as long as you assume these guys are just telling tales.
Anyway, they are real fighters for the truth in my eyes. They were threatened with the modern equivalent of persecution for their science and they accepted that risk.
"The Bush administration threatened people's jobs"
You make it sound like all the president has to do is snap his fingers and people at NASA gets fired.
"They tried to Gag Hanson and politicize everything that office did or said."
why didn't they just fire him?
"Yet they persevered despite these threats. Why would they do this if they were just making it all up?"
Where do they get their funding. for the last twenty years funding for NASA has been going south. What better way to increase funding than doom and gloom. It worked for the republicans in justifying the invasion of Iraq, just to name one.
The actual data dating back 50 years is far more valid than the data dating back 100 years which is far more valid than the data dating back 200 years. Nobody was there 200 years ago to make actual measurement spread out over the globe like we're doing today. In the overall scheme of things we don't have enough data to make actual predictions.
Heck the Farmers Almanac does a better job of predicting the environmental conditions than NASA does. They've been doing it for over a hundred years with better than a 95 percent accuracy rate.
Rickster
present me with the "evidence" that the earth is cooling, disregarding the fact that large sheets of ice are melting way up north.
"disregarding the fact that large sheets of ice are melting way up north."
Every summer they melt, sometime more sometimes less. Every winter they refreeze sometimes more sometimes less. We have no information on how many times the northwest passage was clear for sailing during the last thousand years. It appears that it was probably open for some time when the vikings were farming, yes farming, Greenland.
Rickster
Not a shread of proof exists of that statement. Not one saga from the people of Norway or Iceland has such a claim of sailing the NW passage. Up until the 1940s not one ship ever succeeded at traversing that passage, even today few are willing to risk the voyage. In the last twenty years the ammount of ice regrowth has been below the ammount of ice lost.
The climate is indeed changing, deny it all you want, but I hope you can swim.
"I hope you can swim"
If you melted all the ice in the world there would still be more than enough land to stand on. Do you believe in the story of Noah's Ark.
"Not one saga from the people of Norway or Iceland has such a claim of sailing the NW passage."
Well, they probably didn't call it the Northwest Passage back then. Still archaeological evidence has been found and documented along the Northwest passage.
Introduction to the Last Viking. http://www.spirasolaris.ca/1aintro.html
Besides if they were able to farm Greenland, don't you think the passage was at least open during the summer.
Rickster
A fare few humans still live within a few miles of the coast. And no one really knows what would happen to the climate if the majority of the ice at the poles melted. Would the land be flooded, or parched by drought? Noah's ark is a myth, like Zeus, Amazon's and the rest of the bible.
The archi evidence is that Vinland refers to the Eastern coast of NA. Any archi digs in the far north show no signs that crops have grown up on the NW passage for the last 75 thousand years (at the earliest). Had the Norsemen tried to sail the NW passage, they'd have met the same fate as the Franklin Expidition faced in the 1840s. Death by starvation. Even if the passage had been open, and there is no evidence that it has been, they'd not have survived the crossing.
What you forget with your focus on the farms in Greenland is the influence of the Gulf Stream, there is no current into the actual Arctic Ocean that gives it warm water. Moreover, they didn't grow much grain up there. The land doesn't support that sort of crop, they farmed cattle, and they didn't do that very well. You've fallen victem to the propaganda of the ancient Vikings who named the place 'greenland' as a way to attract settlers. Perhaps you'd consult a website that deals with travel to greenland
http://www.greenland-guide.gl/reg-south.htm
Did you even follow the link and look at the information I supplied? I have a feeling the survival knowledge of the Vikings were far superior to the Franklin Expedition. Any way in the article I supplied there is a map of sites that are attributed to viking visitation. They may have never made it all the way through the Northwest Passage but they went quite a way into it. Did you know the Vikings made it into Oklahoma?
Rickster
lino:
The easiest evidence is the Hadcut temp record of the past 10 years.
1998 was the warmest year, and the overall global temp has been going down since then.
The long term PDO has switched to the cool phase, and that will cause temps to keep going down.
The upper atmosphere has cooled significantly. The sun is not emmitting as much as the cycle is dearth of spots. The solar winds have decreased for the past 50 years. There are a lot of things happening at the same time, which indicate that the cooling trend will continue.
All this information is easy to find, and verify.
Also, those large sheets of ice that you talk about in the Arctic have melted before. Always note that they talk about on "record", which means since we have had satillite data. The St Roch sailed the NW passage in 1944, which was at the end of our previous warm cycle. We seem to be at the end of this warm cycle, which would be right on time with the normal cycles.
unfortunately the first paragraph is a lie.
Look at the temperature chart of the average global temperature from the UK's Met Office. This is the UK's equivalent of NASA's climate division.
You can see from this plot
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
that 1998 was colder than 1996, but tempertures continued to rise after that point and the trend, which is the point, has been upward until the last 3 years where there has been a leveling off period.
The Earth has therefore NOT been cooling since 1998. Period.
Any other statement is a lie. I can think of no other label that correctly identifies this especially since I've shown this data before.
If you ignore all the related facts one might argue that the current leveling off period is the start of a downward trend. In isolation that would be as plausible as predicting a brief respite before we hit even higher average global temperatures.
The point of climate modeling though is to not look at this one item but to try to identify the root causes and model them.
Today ALL models predict a continuing rise in global temperature. Even the completely fanciful models that assume we stop burning ALL fossil fuels tomorrow.
That's pretty worrisome to me.
Oh and the Northwest passage being open in 1944 is an enourmous red herring.
assuming that this story isn't also a lie (since there was no compunction about lying regarding the global temperature facts you cannot assume truth when other 'facts' are presented by siggy) the opening or closing of any specific path or not through the arctic is irrelevant. What matters is total ice coverage.
Even if this wasn't recored and estimated for the arctic from 1944 it can still be estimated by the ice thickness and the retention of old ice which has been recorded ever since we have been sending submarines under the ice in the 1950's. I'm pretty sure though that icebreakers and research teams have been recording polar conditions in Resolute Canada for quite some time before then.
I cannot believe that the climate scientists, as a community, are all liars about total arctic ice coverage and siggy is the sole voice of truth. The reason: As an experimental scientist you can become equally as famous by uncovering flaws in data and flaws in the theories as you can by uncovering new things. So there certainly ARE large numbers of scientific climate skeptics within the field who are pushing to make sure the data is as good as it can be. It's true in any scientific field that contains more than a tiny number of people.
Anyway, Given Siggy's previous economy with the facts I know where I'd put my money!
There's only one string on my banjo, so I'll pick it:
SOMEbody get the big chart from Al Gore's book, "AN Inconv Truth" pin it to your wall, stand back ten feet and tell us what you see.
Think big, like 110kyrs big, and find some explaination for the spikes, upon the most recent of which we are on.
Google equatorial bulge, magnetic striping, and angular momentum, add GHG's out of limits, water vapor and stir.
Vawalla!! The dish we're all going to eat.
Probably too late. But here is an excellent link with summaries of the current state of play from the climate science community.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/
I hope people who are actually swayed by Sigurdur's statements look this up and read it.
In particular the plots are excellent. They actually show you the data and not just the opinions of the people who are interpreting it.
Fact 2 is particularly damming.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
The chart of global average temperature from 1850 to 2007 shows no 'cooling cycle since 1998' at all.
The chart of solar variation (fact 4) is also damming because there is at most about a 0.1% total variation in the solar energy reaching the earth over this same period (and that's maximum excursion).
Fact 1 shows what all these 'natural' forces do compared to what is observed and then shows what all these 'natural' forces plus human activity do compared to what is observed.
Fact 3 shows all the prehistoric and historic data of C02 levels stretching back over about 400,000 years. That spans the last 3 or 4 ice ages and interglacial periods. You can ignore the red part at the end as speculation if you want, but that is simply a projection based on our estimated consumption of fossil fuels and current levels of the ocean's ability to absorb C02.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact3.html
As you can see the maximum excursion of C02 levels has never come close to what we have in modern times.
Hi Phys,
You have any ideas on the characteristics of the temp/CO2 spike reversals evident in Fact 3 charts?
thanks, physicscitizen, for the info.
sigurdur, save your hot air. you'll be needing it for the cooling cycle.
theinitiate
Nothing's more permenant than change. And change is a'comin'. THe Summer of 2009 should be a doozy. Every year now, the evidence(damage) has been mounting.
What part of the country or world is next. Spring is coming, along with tornado season. The last two years, the total tornado count has doubled and tripled. When you hear over and over all the homes, businesses and lives that are destroyed and disrupted, it becomes more difficult to imagine how an economy can even be sustained,let alone grow. My take is that this is only going to get worse.
Hi Common Dreamers,
I was a critical opponent of Sigurdur_11 (we are not related) when we both commented to death in the story http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/26-7 Faster Climate Change Feared.
Take a look at the tiresome debate we engaged in, leading to little benefit except wasted time, out of breath and tired fingers.
You are free to waste your time arguing, just cut and paste from my arguments to each of his points, it's likely that all those points would repeat in an endless cycle of false argument, rectification, false argument, rectification, false argument, rectification ..... on and on....
After a battle to the death, he conceded pretty much nothing. Still we said goodbye then pleasantly enough.
His theories do have some basis. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation IS an important natural variation that IS currently affecting world weather. BUT it is not evidence falsifying anthropogenic climate change.
The UK Met Office alongside EVERY National Science Academy and pretty much 99.5% of recognised scientists ALL AGREE that the large number of natural variations ENSO, NAO, AMDO etc etc have ALL been taken into account in climate change assessments.
So - YES - we are in a minor short term coolish period - BUT even so 2008 was the tenth warmest year in the historical record.
Sensibly, he has to account for variation in planning the crops he plants out in the mid-west. Fine.
Forget arguing with Sigurdur_11, let the rest of us practical dreamers resolve to tackle mitigation and adaptation into the long term.
He obviously isn't a dairy farmer, or he wouldn't have the time and energy to write so many posts!
"The last two years, the total tornado count has doubled and tripled."
Supply a link to your information please.
Actual tornadoes in the US. http://www.examiner.com/x-219-Denver-Weather-Examiner~y2008m10d17-20008-tornado-count-headed-above-2000
2008 1390
2007 1093
2006 1106
2005 1264
Rickster
physicscitizen:
Type in St Roch 1944 into a search. You will find easy evidence as to the sailing of the NW passage.
I don't know what graphs you are looking at. Go to Hadcrut temp graphs. It is very easy to see that since 1998, the earth has switched to a cooling trend.
These are "supposedly" official temp graphs.
Let's compare apples to apples shall we? IF you want to go to 1850-2007 and show no cooling......then I shall go to 10,000-present and that graph sir shows veryyyyy long term cooling. IN fact, we have not gotten even close to as warm as we were 6-8000 years ago.
I am not sorry that we have started the normal cooling trend. It seems that there are folks that deny we have warmed the past 150 years, and they are insistent, even when presented with evidence, that it just cann't be happening.
I have now come to the conclusion that there are folks who think we can only warm, and even when presented with evidence that we are cooling, can't accept that either.
Amazes me to be quit frank.
My plot was in response to your claim that we were in a 40 year cooling cycle.
Clearly, if you were serious about a 40 year cooling cycle then the 150 year period I give in this link to the MET office:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
would have shown at least 3 full cycles. Indeed, if we ignore the error bars you might conclude that there was such a cycle that has been clearly broken since about 1940, however, given the errors on these measurements I don't think you can easily make a claim for ANY periodic cycle over that time period...let alone 40 years.
You have now shifted that claim to include thousands of years of climate variation but curiously you only go back about 8 thousand years. This is very different than your previous arguments and you must recognize this fact.
Sigurdur_1 has told me that I'm wasting space on number 11. He is clearly right. It is for others I write this mainly. people who are willing to look at data and not wishful thinking.
The direct temperature measurements can only go back 150 years as that's when we started keeping direct records. But if you normalize the temperature record in borehole data to that 150 years you can go back a bit further. Here is the record from boreholes over the last 500 years:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/core.html
NOAA is the US equivalent of the MET office, our national oceanographic and atmospheric science institute.
By combining other types of what are termed 'proxy data' (sea creatures, isotope ratios, tree rings...there's quite a lot out there) you can get a temperature map that goes back about a thousand years or so. Here it is from the same source:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/last2000-large.jpg
Or use this link to get more of the back-story behind those plots:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html
The top plot is temperature change where a 'zero' was pretty arbitrarily chosen but that plot is the easiest to understand and shows the rather dramatic reversal of a several hundred year cooling trend after the medieval period...but the medieval period is still colder than the very recent period.
The final plot I'd like people to view is on page 24 of this report by the IPCC which compiles the data from many scientific sources and then the panel of climate scientists try to write a consensus view for the rest of us.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-ts.pdf
The plot on page 24 of C02 you have all seen before I think, the plot on Deuterium concentration is the one you should look at because this correlates with temperature. Deuterium behaves chemically like hydrogen but is twice as massive, so water containing deuterium has a harder time getting into the atmosphere when the earth is colder. If it's not in the atmosphere it has a harder time precipitating out as snow in the antarctic as well and therefore is a proxy for temperature. (It's not the only one, but it's one of the most accurate.) The gray bands identify known interglacial periods similar to our own. Notice again that over the last 10k years on that plot there is no obvious cooling trend...it must be extremely small if it hasn't shown up there OR in the 1k year plot and it clearly isn't there in the 100 year plot either.
(That's a great report by the way, the plot on page 32 is pretty damming too.)
The plot on page 38 of that report must be meat and drink for Siggy_11.
Notice that the upper stratosphere IS cooling! Oh my GAWD!!!
Well, I don't happen to live in the upper stratosphere. The times I've visited I wasn't allowed outside the airplane.
The lower troposphere and surface plots show no such cooling trend though the warming is certainly less impressive if you start the clock at 1960 like these plots do. It is, nonetheless, still present.
GM Sigurdur1. I have to be off to work. I hope you have had a great day.
At least you looked and understand what my conerns are. And I would say we parted last time on very amicable terms.
Had to check opening calls. Be careful Rickster and not hit some of these people with too much antidoal evidence. They will deny that Greenland ever had a Viking settlement and that there could notttttttt have been agriculture on Greendland as it doesn't fit with their idea.
Wouldn't want them to be overloaded with facts now would we?
Ya know, climate is too important to really joke about. I have come to the conclusion that both sides are equally negligent in presenting facts as they are.
Both with to use extremes, try to manipulate the data to fit their mindsets.
I do believe that the truth, as is usually the case, rests in the middle.
There are so many reasons to conserve fossil fuels. Economics is one of them. I do, however, refuse to buy into the mindset, that all climate change is driven by co2. That thought is ludicrous and only shows the poor thinking ability of people.
"Wouldn't want them to be overloaded with facts now would we?"
Not to worry I haven't mentioned that Viking evidence has been found along the Northwest passage. Oops.
"I do, however, refuse to buy into the mindset, that all climate change is driven by co2."
I agree while at the same time support the need to increase funding on global warming research, I have no problem with that. Research equals knowledge and knowledge allows for opportunities to change for the better.
We do need to move away from fossil fuels as a form of energy. It's just the right thing to do.
Rickster
Not to worry I haven't mentioned that Viking evidence has been found along the Northwest passage. Oops.
Source?
It wouldn't be the same sort of website that features ufo's, and things like that would it???
"It wouldn't be the same sort of website that features ufo's, and things like that would it?"
Hey I've seen a UFO(Unidentified Flying Object.) If you would have been with me you would have seen it too. Couldn't tell what it was so it was a UFO to me. So what?
I'll let you decide if there's evidence or not.
Here is one site there are others.
Introduction to the Last Viking. http://www.spirasolaris.ca/1aintro.html
What I originally seen was a archaeological survey of a Viking site on PBS some years back.
Rickster
Spirasolaris? I looked at the site, whoever published it is a wishful thinker.
Alchemists?
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/AlchemicalGold.html
Yah, that's a credible source. In a pigs arse.
The PBS doc you saw, was one I saw too. It was talking about sites on the shores of NEWFOUNDLAND, not British Columbia.
There's a world of difference between what's required to sail over a short patch of ocean and to cross a few thousand miles of arctic tundra.
"whoever published it is a wishful thinker."
It appears you didn't look at the site for very long. He supplies evidence to back up his claims. There is even a map in there showing where viking sites are located and these are all located inside the Northwest passage.
Rickster
You have no clue what evidence is. Making a statement is not proof. One site makes claims that are not published in any scholary journals, have no physical proof (such as stone buildings, tools or other artifacts), and then has links to other mythical and mystical falderal... I expect you'd accept a Harry Potter fanfic site as 'proof' that witchcraft exists after using that sort of site to back up your claims...
In other words you didn't take the time to read or look.
Rickster
A quote from J4zonian a few days ago - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/05-12
No-one has said it better........Who is right I wonder? DUUUUuhhh, as the teens say!
Sigurdur,
I agree. Cap and Trade is a lousy scheme. It will not do nearly enough to stop Global Climate Catastrophe. I too shake my head in dismay at what passes for education. It has produced a public that doesn’t know the difference between science and ludicrous nonsense, a public that knows little about the scientific process and less about who owns and controls the media that report the various opinions about what 2 plus 2 equals, all with equal weight.
I do not doubt that there is a “growing body of investigation” into sunspots and all kinds of other disproven nonsensical non-fossil-fuel causes of global climate catastrophe, as the oil and coal companies have billions of dollars to throw into confusing uninformed people and obfuscating the real debate.
What I want to know, however, is what in hell a “body of investigation” is. Is that the phrase you use to trick us into thinking there is actual science going on? There is also a growing body of investigation into alien abductions and crop circles, but don’t expect any proof in the journal Nature or the astronomy science periodicals. I think you’re more likely to find it at the supermarket checkout counter rack.
We are not talking about “warming” like a comfy sweater, we are talking about floods and drought, heat waves and increasing numbers of increasingly severe hurricanes and tornadoes, disruption of ecosystems all over the world, disappearances of thousands or more of species, and the disappearance of forests that hold necessary biodiversity and reefs and coastal wetlands that serve as nurseries for the fish we eat and other food chains depend on. How has humanity fared with those?
Despite your plea to not attack the person but the argument not much is left. You use nonsense couched in pseudo-scientific terms; you use anecdotal (antidoal?) evidence to cloud, in the minds of those who don’t know better, the millions of bits of data by tens of thousands of scientists who have shown in thousands of studies in dozens of different fields that anthropogenic global climate catastrophe is real, here and a monumental threat to civilization.
Like all neoconservatives and science deniers you are either lying, stupid or crazy. If the first, please allow your conscience to operate freely and stop delaying action that we need to keep utter disaster from happening.
If not, I understand you can’t very well help yourself from thinking such things, but please follow the advice above and trust my judgment, which has your and our best interest at heart. Stop writing and speaking about topics you seem not to understand. We need to get on with the work of converting society to a renewable, conserver society.
Sigurdur_11 said....
Sir, you had better go look at the data. You can admit you have egg on your face now.
The trend of the earths temp has changed. WE have numerous things occuring at the same time which do NOT bode well for man.
1. The PDO has switched to cool. This is around a 40 year cycle.
2. The sun is at a minimum...and not only that but the solar winds have decreased approx 23% in the past 50 years.
3. Go look at Had/Ret data for the temp trend.
4. The upper atmosphere has cooled dramatically.
5. What silicon valley wrote is emperically correct in models. That is given science
6. The consensus is not what people are proclaiming.
People who discredit the person, rather than the information they are posting only show their lack of knowledge.
Carbon cap and trade is a lousy scheme for more taxes and more government. It will not solve co2 emmissions at all.
There is a growing body of investigation that it is not only the thermal units that the sun produces that affect our climate, but the ions etc as well.
Climate science is an infant science. IF you have been educated in our public schools as of late, I can understand your confusion in this. I look at what my daughter is being taught and shake my head in dismay. Am going to get on the school board to get this straightened out.
Having said this, there is good reason to develop alternative energy. Fossil fuels are finite, and being so, scarcity will cause severe economic disruption.
Man has always fared much better with warmth, rather than cold. All you have to do is look at the temps 5-6000 years ago. We are not even close to those yet.
And for someone to make the stupid statement that the lack of ice over the Antarctic is something new......makes me laugh. Remember, they are only talking in the past 30 years. WEll, antidoal evidence is ripe to show that the current flucuation in that ice is NORMAL. Heck, the St Rock sailed the North West Passage in 1944, near the end of our last warm cycle. IN case you didn't read history......it sailed from Vancouver, BC to Halifax, NS. All on open water. And that is the RECENT past.
Sheeeeesh.....
Sigurdur1:
Thank you for correcting my spelling mistake (ref antidoal).
I am an old farmer who has seen many things that have "supposedly" been perfected, and turn out to be false. I believe my skeptisism has valid weight.
In all my postings you will never see me deny that co2 is a driver of temps.
In all my postings you will never see me deny that the past 30 years has shown a warming trend.
What I am skeptical about is that the ONLY reason for said trend is co2, as we have had warming trends similiar to this one in the past. And it appears that the 10 year trend in temps is down. NOTE: 10 year trend. In that 10 year trend we have the PDO switching, the sun cycles not performing, the solar winds energy receeding, just to name a few. Ya see, I want to find allll the reasons we were warming. There is more at work here than co2.
And even if we have turned to a 30 year cool phase, that in no way negates the importance of developing wind/solar steam/tidal flow energy sources. In fact, I will say that cooing trend only accelerates the reasons to develop these sources as our energy requirements are going to escalate.
Another strong reason to increase energy from non fossil sources is the ph of the ocean. That is hugely important, prob more important than temperature.
Did you know that the climate models predict higher variation in peak to valley temperatures on ALL scales, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly...? Should I go on or do you get the picture? That means that you will increasingly find both hotter and colder temperatures as the frequency of extremes increases.
As for solar forcing.... No trend up or down in cosmic neutrons since 1953 (Climax data). No trend up or down in sunspot cycle length since 1960 (NASA). No trend up or down in direct measured radiative output.
Yet there has been a steady increase in global mean temperature since circa 1970. (Actually since circa 1890, except for the dip from circa 1943 to 1970.)
Global warming refers to a warming of the average global temperature. It does not preclude cooling in some locations. In fact, if some locations are cooling while the globe is warming on average, it follows that there must be other areas that are warming even faster than the global average. This is precisely what is happening in the Arctic, where temperatures over the past few decades have risen twice as fast as the global average, with potentially disastrous consequences.
How can a 35-40% increase in CO2 over the last 150 years not be driving something? The kinds of natural cycles which exist all have periods of tens of thousands of years, not decades or centuries, and they simply can't account for the current observed (rapid) rate of temperature change.
The permafrost's melting, rotting and outgassing. Opening arctic oceans are absorbing rather than reflecting solar radiation. Desertification of temperate crop lands is increasing. Tropical rain forest oxygen factories are being cut down. Population pressures are building exponentially. In 50 years the U.S. is predicted to jump from 300 to 400 million people.
Climate is not weather. Climate is weather over time, weather is now. Today may be cooler, but when taken as a moving average, the global average temperatures are unquestionably advancing.
Every single year, since 1976, has been above the average for the twentieth century.
The odds of that happening, is 4 billion to 1
Well then, stop eccentrically posting information that seems based on outdated contrarian data, you are more eco-centric in private than your overall public position. Science easily accomadates people who don't believe in perfection.
In the previous debate you came along with any and every argument drawn from the denialist literature. Why? Who cares whether Vikings drank wine in Greenland, ships traversed the Arctic as if it was the Adriatic? Irrelevant!
Robust, fully backedup science, shows that Medieval warming was a localised northern hemisphere phenomenenon, and at less than 0.4 degrees for 150 years, was certainly less than half what we are now achieving. The hockey-stick was never discredited, you just have to forget that argument. It was tested under full scrutiny, and now, re-drawn a 100 times more clearly, lays out the record.
The role of solar forcing, alongside ocean oscillations, is as clear as the daylight. The science has all that as well sorted as science can achieve. Unequivocal.
We know we're in uncharted territory, so what is your point, popping up on every thread with the same items, repeating issues already solved and fully covered by mainstream science?
You are not sceptical about the core issues, so what's your beef? Everyone respectable has an authentic interest in finding out all the reasons why we were / are / will be warming from now onwards, and the science community has pursued a robust programme to find it all out.
You as a farmer mustn't confuse the fact you need good quality seasonal and annual weather forecasts, that tell you to plant cool-adapted crops for the next year, with what the climate specialists will tell you about the longer term prospects, rainfall and temperature wise.
There is no doubt that CC is happening and is largely due to human causes, just uncertainty about how bad it will become. UNEQUIVOCALLY.
phys:
Put your start point at 1998...and end it in 2008. Now if that isn't 10 years of cooling...and a 10 year trend, everything that I have been taught about math is false.
I will provide the following link. It is important to read it and actually understand what it says. Think about it, hash it over, and then get back to me...ok?
http://www.free-the-memes.net/writings/warming2/hottest_year.html
Well then, stop eccentrically posting information that seems based on outdated contrarian data, you are more eco-centric in private than your overall public position. Science easily accomadates people who don't believe in perfection.
In the previous debate you came along with any and every argument drawn from the denialist literature. Why? Who cares whether Vikings drank wine in Greenland, ships traversed the Arctic as if it was the Adriatic? Irrelevant!
Robust, fully backedup science, shows that Medieval warming was a localised northern hemisphere phenomenenon, and at less than 0.4 degrees for 150 years, was certainly less than half what we are now achieving. The hockey-stick was never discredited, you just have to forget that argument. It was tested under full scrutiny, and now, re-drawn a 100 times more clearly, lays out the record.
The role of solar forcing, alongside ocean oscillations, is as clear as the daylight. The science has all that as well sorted as science can achieve. Unequivocal.
We know we're in uncharted territory, so what is your point, popping up on every thread with the same items, repeating issues already solved and fully covered by mainstream science?
You are not sceptical about the core issues, so what's your beef? Everyone respectable has an authentic interest in finding out all the reasons why we were / are / will be warming from now onwards, and the science community has pursued a robust programme to find it all out.
You as a farmer mustn't confuse the fact you need good quality seasonal and annual weather forecasts, that tell you to plant cool-adapted crops for the next year, with what the climate specialists will tell you about the longer term prospects, rainfall and temperature wise.
There is no doubt that CC is happening and is largely due to human causes, just uncertainty about how bad it will become. UNEQUIVOCALLY.
So now we know what the folds in the hide of the (elephant?) look like when examined with a magnifying glass...what do you guys see when you back about 400,000 years away from that smelly beast?
When, how and at what rate must the snow and ice be deposited on the poles to effect an ice age?
Won't make any difference as we scratch for fossil fuels to heat our homes etc during the coming cold.
Time to wake up and find alternative sources of fuel.
Hey, Sig, you seen that chart yet?
If/when you do, notice that in previous spike reversals, the temp deviation from mean is about the same after as before---unless you happen to be under several (10's?, 100's?, 1000's?) feet of snow...
At least we all care enough to type...
snydly:
I have not seen the chart you refer too. All I know is that we are entering a period of cooling, and I do not like it.
I have seen this before. During the 70's....science was hell bent to tell us we were entering an ice age. During the 90's and early 2,000's, science is hell bent telling us we are going to warm more and more.
Both times people had blinders on and missed the turn. Warming is easier to deal with than cooling. Cooling bites one in the butt....and it hurts.
Too many natural forces coming together at one time that will only exagerate this cooling.
The cooling deniers are just as bad as the warming deniers.
There are some on here that will shake their head and say I am all wet. Well, prove to me that I am wrong. So far they haven't brought forth any credible proof.
I am talking real time, real life. Not models etc. There are too many variables that are NOT taken into account in those models.
Enough said I think.