theyeti

Northren high lattitudes have been warming at an accelerated rate, while the Antarctic has been warming only slowly. In fact, the arctic has been warming at 2o per decade since the 70s. This is probably due to the <a href="http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/temperature.htm#NAO" target="_blank">North Atlantic Oscillation</a>. The bad news is that the NAO has been behaving abnormally of late.

If you're willing to take the consequences. I, for one, like it here. I don't want to move to Alaska where the ground will be mushy from melted permafrost. The expected sea level increase for the next century ranges from a few inches to over 3ft (the current rate of rise is 30cm per century). If it's the latter, I won't have any choice but to move (not that I don't plan to move someday anyway).
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BTW Elwood, having dug through the web looking for info on this topic, I noticed a rather interesting trend. Every single reputable scientific organization that takes an interest in climate, including NASA, NOAA, USGS, American Geophysical Union, Woods Hole Institute, etc., etc. has position papers out saying that yes, global warming is real, it will have negative consequences, and we should consider doing something about it. I've systematically avoided environmentalist sites; the objective consensus of the scientific community is clear.

By contrast, almost all of the global warming nay-sayers are <a href="http://www.evworld.com/archives/interviews/gelbspan2.html" target="_blank">getting paid by fossil fuel concerns</a> and have engaged in some <a href="http://www.whrc.org/globalwarming/warmingearth.htm" target="_blank">questionable tactics</a>. See also <a href="http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=3207&method=full" target="_blank">here</a>. The more I look at it, the more global warming denial is looking a lot like creationism. You're a smart guy, Elwood. It's time you did some research and reconsidered your stance on this issue.

theyeti

elwoodblues

Always willing to, yeti, it's just a matter of available free time. Maybe it is time I looked into that area again; I must admit it's been a fair while since I last looked seriously into it.

It'll take an awful lot of proving, though. I sat through I don't know how many brainwashing sessions in grade school being told that all the rainforests would be gone by the time I was 20 and we wouldn't be able to breathe without masks by now. The methods made me suspicious. I mean, basically brainwashing 7-year-olds. It'd take quite a bit to overcome that.

Late_Cretaceous

How dare anyone question the rhetoric of global warming, or try to bring science into it. Global warming is a political issue, not a scientific one. And the politically correct point of view (WHICH MAY NOT BE CONTRADICTED) is that Global warming is happening, and that it is bad - all of it. You may NOT ask "is GW happening", or "would there be any positive effects". You may not ponder whether or not GW could lead to a negative feedback in climate, and actually result in long term cooling. There is a whole segment of the economy based on GW gloom and doom predictions, research grants and books and lobyists and what not. You can't take that away. If you dare question GW rhetoric you are an anti enviornmentalist who wants nothing more then to watch panda bears wither and die in the baking sun. Lets just keep things in prospective shall we ppl.

Friar Bellows

Well said, theyeti. You've obviously done quite a bit of research on this.

echidna

Global warming does seem widely accepted, however only at the lower atmospheric levels. Satellite imaging of the upper atmosphere shows very little change over 20 years.

In addition, the patterns appear very sporadic. Amongst all the hotspots, Antactica for instance has 10% more pack ice than 20 years ago.

elwoodblues

It's these kind of inconsistencies that make me seriously, seriously doubt the people who are so bloody definite and hard-nosed about the issue, one way or the other. How many factors are we not taking into account correctly, or at all? How many ways are there just to screw up measurements of this nature? I'm a big fan of science, but drawing rock-solid (or even reasonably solid) conclusions from that kind of inherently soft data seems patently impossible.

echidna

To muddy the issue, on median estimates, the Kyoto Protcol delays (not stops) the Greenhouse Effect, by 6 years in 2100. Secondly, with median estimates for the economic cost of the Kyoto Protocol, favourably matching UN estimates of the cost to bring safe drinking water to the world’s population, there is an automatic question as to our priorities.

(Statements paraphrased from the Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg which was severely rebuked by SciAm, whose own criticism I am sceptical of, if you can follow the scepticism upon scepticism upon scepticism.)

As a side track, <a href="http://www.lomborg.com/books.htm" target="_blank">http://www.lomborg.com/books.htm</a>

For one of the many poisonous (and IMO very emotionally loaded) critiques here’s <a href="http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp" target="_blank">http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp</a>

But just for starters the Population and Human Health criticisms are misguided IMO.

echidna

The concern is, that whether it does or not, there is absolutely no way of driving greenhouse gas emissions backwards. Whether we like it or not, our growing energy future remains in carbon fuels.

So far the only cataclysmic possibility which I am aware of seems to be an unknown risk posed by methane hydrates,
<a href="http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html" target="_blank">http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html</a>

So while GWB is touting methane hydrates as the next energy solution, the risk is that small ocean temperature changes release these unstable compounds which in turn release huge quantities of methane, with 10 times more greenhouse potential than CO2, potentially creating an exponential process, exacerbating a 5 degree temperature increase greatly. But being a new field, no one seems to understand much yet.

Ruy Lopez

Participants have posted so many URLs that I am not ready with a more comprehensive assessment. I have two comments though so far.

From Yeti: I find something unexplained by this chart which is designed to be sensitive to minor temp. variation. Where is the balmy Labrador, Newfoundland or Greenland of Eric the Red early in the second millenium. And where is the mini-ice age of Dickens where the Thames froze. There are indeed anomalies in the trend but very minimal to account for those two events. Considering the drastic rise of the red line in the last century, why is Labrador still "normally cold"? Do you know the answer Yeti?

Echidna and Elwoodblues:
Elwood did not explain a crucial detail about urban heat islands. Temperature MONITORS are normally located in airports and other urban sites. Did the source links state that they separated urban monitors from those in beaches and lighthouses? And how comparable are these modern urban measurements compared to those 300 years ago? Maybe this a reason Echidna says that atmospheric measurements have not changed much.

Lastly there is too much material in the thread about the Permian/Triassic and Creta/Tertiary and other very ancient observations. They are irrelevant to the OP. I would think we are only interested in data from the last 6,000 to 8,000 years to the present; that is post-last ice age.

Hope to be back.

Late_Cretaceous

elwoodblues - YOu said it!

THe truth is, nobody really knows or understands climate change. The field is too muddied by emotional rhetoric and pseudoscience. Even from a stricly scienctific point - it is too complex and we don't understand all the variables (let alone control them). There is a LOT of opinion out there, and not all of it is influenced by reality.

It evokes the words of Neils Bohr "If you think you understand it, it only means that you don't know the first thing about it".

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: Late_Cretaceous ]</p>