The Great Global Warming/Cooling Thread Part 2

[Halcyon Daze]

I finally get it, this whole climate change hoax is just a conspiracy to corner the market for a new generation of refrigeration gasses... those devious scoundrels!!!

(Where's Dolos when you need him)

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agree to wind down production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/president-obama-and-chinese-president-xi-jinping-agree-to-wind-down-production-and-use-of-hydrofluorocarbons-or-hfcs/2013/06/08/92e4d79e-d08f-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

The agreement between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday to wind down the production and consumption of a class of chemicals commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners could mark a key step toward eliminating some of the most potent greenhouse gases.

The chemical group currently accounts for only 2 percent of greenhouse gases, but consumption is growing exponentially as people in developing countries grow wealthy enough to purchase air conditioners. A global push to get rid of HFCs could potentially reduce the greenhouse gases by the equivalent of 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050, equal to roughly two years’ worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions, experts estimate.

Obama and Xi said they would use the framework of the Montreal Protocol, established in 1987 to combat the use of chemicals that were depleting stratospheric ozone. The Montreal Protocol succeeded in phasing out nearly 100 chemicals, but one unforeseen side effect was to spur the production of HFCs, which are short-lived and do not damage the ozone but are hundreds to tens of thousands times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide.

“The China-U.S. agreement on phasing down HFCs under the Montreal Protocol will provide the single biggest, fastest, cheapest, and most secure piece of climate mitigation available to the world through 2020,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development and a longtime advocate of fast-action mitigation under the Montreal Protocol.

Edited June 11, 2013 by Halcyon Daze

[whitewind]

Ah yes, the New World Order run by fascist greenies to impose their toxic non-pollution solution on everyone.

[Halcyon Daze]

Damn their pointless idealism.

Bloody conspiring, entrepreneurial, idealistic eco-hippies!!!

Only Lord Monkton and the big polluters can save humanity now.

[whitewind]

University of Melbourne research links 'angry' summer to human factors

Thursday June 27, 2013 - 12:10 EST

Research has shown human factors are likely to have influenced Australia's recent hot summer.

The University of Melbourne has released a study examining more than 90 climate model simulations of Australian summer temperatures over the past 100 years.

The research, published in the journal of the American Geophysical Union, shows the record-breaking summer occurred at a time of weak to neutral La Nina conditions.

Co-author, Professor David Karoly, says researchers are now more than 90 per cent sure of the link.

"The influence of increasing greenhouse gases, the influence of changes in climate due to human activity have been much more apparent as the cause of the angry summer, as it's been called, that we experienced last summer," he said.

"The extreme summer that we experienced was five time more likely than if we had just had natural factors influencing the climate."

- ABC

© ABC 2013

[waterboy 2.0]

U.S. heatwave bakes southwest states Temperatures between 115 and 120 degrees expected for Arizona, Nevada and California

The Associated Press Posted: Jun 29, 2013 11:03 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 29, 2013 11:01 PM ET

Tubers float down the Salt River on Saturday, June 29, 2013, in Phoenix. (Rick Scuteri/Associated Press)

Related Stories

• Are you dependent on air conditioning?

Scorching heat blistered the Southwest on Saturday, where highs between 115 and 120 degrees were expected for parts of Arizona, Nevada and California through the weekend.

Forecasters said temperatures in sunbaked Las Vegas could match the record of 117 degrees Saturday; as of late afternoon, it was 115 degrees. Phoenix hit 119 degrees by mid-afternoon, breaking the record for June 29 that was set in 1994. And large swaths of California sweltered under extreme heat warnings, which are expected to last into Tuesday night -- and maybe even longer.

• Record U.S. heat wave leads to 30 deaths

Dan Kail was vacationing in Las Vegas when he heard that the temperature at California's Death Valley could approach 130 degrees this weekend. He didn't hesitate to make a trip to the desert location that is typically the hottest place on the planet.

"Coming to Death Valley in the summertime has always been on the top of my bucket list," the 67-year-old Pittsburgh man said. "When I found out it might set a record I rented a car and drove straight over. If it goes above 130 I will have something to brag about."

The forecast called for Death Valley called for 128 degrees Saturday, but it was 3 degrees shy of that, according to unofficial reports from the National Weather Service. Death Valley's record high of 134 degrees, set a century ago, stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

• 7 tips to stay cool in a heat wave

A couple hours south in Baker, the temperature peaked at an unofficial 117 degrees in the road tripper's oasis in the Mojave Desert on Interstate 15. The strip of gas stations and restaurants between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is known by travelers for the giant thermometer that often notes temperatures in the triple digits.

At the Mad Greek restaurant there, a waitress called out orders for "Chocolate shake! Strawberry shake!" while the temperature hovered at 112 degrees during the lunch rush.

In Southern California, Riverside saw 105 degrees, and Palm Springs reached 122 degrees. At Lancaster Fox Field in Los Angeles County, temperatures reached 111, a record.

To make matters worse, National Weather Service meteorologists John Dumas said cooling ocean breezes haven't been traveling far enough inland overnight to fan Southern California's overheated valleys and deserts.

• Rare Canada Day heat wave could break records in B.C.

Burbank set a record overnight low with temperatures dipping to 74 degrees overnight, much warmer than the previous record of 68 degrees for Saturday's early hours.

In Northern California, temperatures Saturday reached the upper 90s in San Jose.

Farther north, triple-digit temps were reached in downtown Sacramento on Saturday, according to the weather service.

Authorities say a man died and another was hospitalized in serious condition Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas.

Man dead in Las Vegas

Las Vegas fire and rescue spokesman Tim Szymanski says paramedics responded to a home with no air conditioning and found an elderly man dead. He says while the man had medical issues, paramedics thought his condition was aggravated by the heat.

Paramedics say another elderly man was on a long trip in his car when the air conditioning went out. Paramedics say he taken to the hospital in serious condition with heat stroke after he stopped in Las Vegas.

Health officials warned people to be extremely careful when venturing outdoors. The risks include not only dehydration and heat stroke but burns from the concrete and asphalt. Dogs can suffer burns and blisters on their paws by walking on hot pavement.

Cooling stations set up

Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless and elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. In Phoenix, Joe Arpaio, the famously hard-nosed sheriff who runs a tent jail, planned to distribute ice cream and cold towels to inmates this weekend.

Officials said personnel were added to the Border Patrol's search-and-rescue unit because of the danger to people trying to slip across the Mexican border. At least seven people have been found dead in the last week in Arizona after falling victim to the brutal desert heat.

Temperatures are also expected to soar across Utah and into Wyoming and Idaho, with triple-digit heat forecast for the Boise area. Cities in Washington state that are better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s next week.

The heat was so punishing that rangers took up positions at trailheads at Lake Mead in Nevada to persuade people not to hike. Zookeepers in Phoenix hosed down the elephants and fed tigers frozen fish snacks. Dogs were at risk of burning their paws on scorched pavement, and airlines kept close watch on the heat for fear that it could cause flights to be delayed.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/06/29/heat-wave-california-nevada-arizona.html

115-120 degrees F = 46.1 - 48.8 dgrees C

Edited June 30, 2013 by waterboy

[woof woof woof]

http://library.wmo.int/opac/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=15112

click on the PDf link........... shows a report of how the last decade has been weather extremewise speaking.

[qualia]

CIA co-sponsoring geoengineering study to look at reversing global warming options

The CIA along with NASA and NOAA is reportedly funding a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) project whose goal is to study several geoengineering options aimed at reversing global warming. Dana Liebelson and Chris Mooney have written an article which has been printed in both Slate and MotherJones claiming that William Kearney, a spokesman for NAS told them that the CIA is the "US intelligence community" member identified on the NAS web site describing the project.

Geoengineering projects are any attempts to alter the way the planet or its weather systems operate. The project at NAS is not to conduct any such engineering but to study several options that have been suggested by people in the geoengineering community as a means of reversing global warming. Such options include sending particles into the atmosphere to reflect back some of the sun's heat, or building a machine that could suck carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it somewhere. NAS has been given $630,000 to conduct the study which is to last 21 months.

More specifically, the project goals are to study ways in which weather patterns might be artificially influenced, assess possible negative impacts of doing so and to try to determine national security issues related to global warming or trying to reverse it. The CIA has previously looked into the issue of global warming as it applies to national security and even had a research center dedicated to its efforts. That center was closed down last year, however, after members of the U.S. Congress objected to the agency's involvement in such activities. It's not yet known how government officials will respond to this new initiative or whether private entities (conspiracy theorists) will consider such funding part of a larger effort by the agency to exert control over the rest of the world.

To date, there have already been attempts to alter the weather—the U.S. military (carrying out a CIA plan) famously tried to make it rain more during the Vietnam War to bog down enemy supply lines. More recently, China tried seeding clouds prior to the Summer Olympics hoping to cause rain to fall before reaching Beijing. A private company also recently seeded a portion of the ocean off the coast of Canada with the idea of igniting plankton growth that would suck carbon out of the air. Unfortunately, testing whether any such efforts have actually worked has proven difficult, if not impossible—how can you determine if the amount of rain that fell after cloud seeding, was more than it would have been otherwise?

Due to its efforts, it's clear the CIA is taking the issue of global warning very seriously. Changes in geography, could for example, cause wars. If snow pack melts, more land becomes available, also new shipping lanes will open up—both could become zones of contention. There is also the possibility of strife as some areas receive more rainfall and others less.

For its part, NAS will be building on research that has already been conducted by other groups. The U.K.'s Royal Society, for example, conducted a similar study back in 2009. The academy insists that it will make all findings public once the study is complete.

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-cia-co-sponsoring-geoengineering-reversing-global.html

lol, this going to send alex jones into conniptions

[whitewind]

I don't often link to blogs, but Jerry Colby-Williams is a respected member of the community, and he has been noticing the apparent affects of climate change in his own garden this year. Some great pictures of his flowering plants with little pop-ups explaining just how the peculiar weather has been impacting the flora and fauna in his garden.

jerry-coleby-williams.net/2013/07/29/did-brisbane-skip-winter

Did Brisbane Skip Winter?

29/07/2013 by jerrycolebywilliams

This year my garden had an extended autumn and now, judging by the flowers outside, it’s spring. Did Brisbane skip winter?

In a couple of years the Arctic will lose its summer ice for the first time since humans evolved. At that point the Earth will have lost its protective, reflective ‘heat shield’ and the catastrophic phase of Global Warming will begin.

As the noisy miners catch caterpillars to feed their chicks, which hatched two weeks earlier this year, I thought I’d capture shots of what I used to call ‘spring’ flowers in my garden.

Confused? So is nature. We have another month of ‘official’ winter still to go…

[whitewind]

Honestly, I'm not sure if any but a few people are bothering to read this thread but every month records are being broken. It scares the shit out of me because I really believe we've hit a non-stoppable tipping point and we're heading towards runaway climate change.

This July, Weatherzone has reported that Melbourne has recorded it's hottest July in 160years of records, and the same looked likely for Shanghai a few days ago, with really hot weather forcasted for the rest of the week.

If you know where to look, a terrifying number of heat records have been broken in the last 12 months and still the mainstream media are ignoring it all, and spouting the denier tropes. Tony Abbott believes its a crock, and even Rudd has backed down. The pressure from the economy and it's champions is massive, and there seems so little we can do. I'm sick of desktop campaigning but I have a job and child to take care of...

AAAAARGH!

[SunChaser]

^^^Ok, but what about the natural galacial & intergalactial cycles of the earth?

Humans have survived many extreme climate changes in the past with nothing but wooden spears and the use of fire, not like its going to wipe us out now, even if we are artificially speeding up the current climate cycle.

Dont get me wrong, Im all for using the climate change issue to tax the shit out of corporations that pollute our air (since if nothing else, its unhealthy to us) and erode our environment (no point throwing the baby out with the bath water), but seriously, I think people just get themselves to worked up about all this.

Exploiting the environment in order to thrive is just what life does; its a completely natural part of evolution. Yeah, admittedly there maybe better ways to do it, but that can only be from the perspective of hindsight cant it?

For example, it might have been far more beneficial to all life if humans had of learnt more effective methods of agriculture to sustain ourselves, before we completely wiped out all the mega fauna, but we didnt and yet life still thrives. It was probably just one of our many pinnacle live and learn moments maybe?

On the upside though, we can now go about our days not worrying about being bowled over by giant wombats or being eaten by massive carnivore macropods.

Human beings are just simply doing what we have naturally evolved to do, theres no set path, no right or wrong way, its just a constant process of trial and error. Time dictates change and personally Im glad it does and to be honest, I dont think homo sapiens are doing so bad, if you look at the picture as a whole. What we have built for ourselves today has got to be better than constantly chasing impala around the hot grasslands just to survive.

You cant stop progress, it goes against the grain of evolution and if humans were to attempt to do so, it would be at the expense of our own downfall. Exploiting our natural resources as quickly as possible in order to further thrive as quickly as possible, is the only chance we have of preserving the human consciousness past the natural life span of the earth itself, imo.

[SunChaser]

Double post!

Edited August 13, 2013 by SunChaser

[whitewind]

Morning Sunchaser.

I'm going to recommend http://www.skepticalscience.com/ to start with, as I don't have much time.

^^^Ok, but what about the natural galacial & intergalactial cycles of the earth?

This is much bigger than that, and it is happening much more quickly. It is also happening on a global scale (see "little ice age") and in a world where biodiversity has already been significantly reduced. The potential (and most likely) consequences are severe and we have little time (and political will) to deal with them. Timescale is important, because if we intelligent species are unable to adapt (as per government initiatives, or lack of) then the ability for evolution to work it's magic is even less capable. It takes generations to adapt - most species (bar insects) do not have this time. There is a lot of reding up to do on this - DO NOT trust the mainstream media, they don't understand and most have an agenda which runs contrary to the science.

Humans have survived many extreme climate changes in the past with nothing but wooden spears and the use of fire, not like its going to wipe us out now, even if we are artificially speeding up the current climate cycle.

No, it is unlikely to wipe out our species but this, with resource depletion on a massive scale and with an ever-growing population, is likely to make it very uncomfortable for a lot of people. Population size is unprecedented and is based on a mild climate with easy resource extraction, and food production and distribution is based on significant oil use, this will simply not be possible in the future. This is the most debatable part of the question. And just remember, we are the ONLY species with the technology to deal with extreme climate change, do we have the resources to carry the other species with us through GM and distribution? That's very easy to answer. We don't, and can't, we don't even know how many species there are, let alone already lost, letr alone their genetic makeup and what they need to survive!

Dont get me wrong, Im all for using the climate change issue to tax the shit out of corporations that pollute our air (since if nothing else, its unhealthy to us) and erode our environment (no point throwing the baby out with the bath water), but seriously, I think people just get themselves to worked up about all this.

 

In my opinion, and increasingly that of so many scientists, there is a significant need for alarm bells to ring. But corporations and their supporting governments have been covering it up. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it will be to change. It already is too late, I believe, we have fucked our environment past the point of no return. It would take millenia to bring the biosphere back to such a diverse state, if we gave it chance. Most people can't see that, but already we live in a massively impoverished biosphere. To assume this is a huge mistake, but most people don't know any different.

Imagine a single cancer cell, and imagine your entire dietary input is geared towards promoting this cancer cell above all the others in your body. You question it's significance, it's so small it can't do any damage, my body can adjust, my body wouldn't be here if there weren't mutations, my doctor is being alarmist, but I NEED to eat the food that encourages cancer, it's the sun that causes cancer and I'll just stay inside if it gets too big,

[whitewind]

There's a great new article in The Guardian which covers temperatures and ice-ages.

A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

Research has shown that a grand solar minimum would offset no more than 0.3°C of global warming

Fortunately for us, solar activity is quite stable, and a solar minimum would only have a small effect on global temperatures. Photograph: saesnes

Recent articles in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (translation available here) and in the Irish Times both ran headlines claiming that another grand solar minimum could potentially trigger an "ice age" or "mini ice age" this century. These articles actually refer to the Little Ice Age (LIA) – a period about 500 to 150 years ago when global surface temperatures were approximately 1°C colder than they are today. This is quite different from an ice age, which are more like 5°C colder than today. The LIA was not actually very cold on a global scale.

So, in order to trigger another LIA, a new grand solar minimum would have to cause about 1°C cooling, plus it would have to offset the continued human-caused global warming of 1 to 5°C by 2100, depending on how our greenhouse gas emissions change over the next century.

In the Jyllands-Posten article, Henrik Svensmark (the main scientist behind the hypothesis that the sun has a significant indirect impact on global climate via galactic cosmic rays) was a bit more measured, suggesting,

So these two articles are suggesting that a grand solar minimum could have a net cooling effect in the ballpark of 1 to 6°C, depending on how human greenhouse gas emissions change over the next century. Is it plausible that a grand solar minimum could make that happen?

"I can imagine that it will become 0.2°C colder. I would be surprised if it became 1–2°C"

The short answer is, 'No.'

Fortunately, Solar Output is Stable

We're fortunate that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface is very stable. Climate contrarians will often ask if we'd prefer if the planet were warming or cooling, suggesting that global warming is a good thing because at least the planet isn't getting colder. This is a false dichotomy - an ideal climate is a stable one.

The relatively stable climate over the past 10,000 years has allowed establishment of human civilization, by making it possible to create large stationary agricultural farms because we could rely on stable weather patterns. During that time, net global surface temperatures changes haven't exceeded 1°C from the coldest to the hottest climates, though we're now approaching that degree of change, with 1°C warming since the LIA, 0.8°C of that over the past century, with much more to come.

What difference would a grand solar minimum make in the amount of solar energy reaching Earth? Two examples are the Maunder Minimum, a period of very low solar activity between 1645 and 1715, and the Dalton Minimum, a period of low (but not as low as the Maunder Minimum) solar activity between 1790 and 1830.

400 years of sunspot observations data. Created by Robert Rohde, via Wikipedia.

Relative to current levels, the Dalton Minimum represents a 0.08% decrease in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, and the Maunder Minimum represents a 0.25% decline. That's how stable solar activity is. That's also why we're playing with fire by increasing the greenhouse effect so much and so quickly. We're threatening the stability of the climate that has been so favorable to our development.

Peer-Reviewed Research Says Global Warming will Continue

There have been several studies in recent years investigating what impact another grand solar minimum would have on global surface temperatures, since solar research suggests it's possible we could be due for another extended solar minimum. Generally these studies will run climate model simulations under a given greenhouse gas emissions scenario with stable solar activity, then run the same scenario with the sun going into a grand minimum, and look at the difference in resulting global surface temperature changes.

Using this approach, Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010) (PDF available here) estimated that another solar minimum equivalent to the Dalton and Maunder minima would cause 0.09°C and 0.26°C cooling, respectively.

The global mean temperature difference is shown for the time period 1900 to 2100 for the IPCC A2 emissions scenario. The red line shows predicted temperature change for the current level of solar activity, the blue line shows predicted temperature change for solar activity at the much lower level of the Maunder Minimum, and the black line shows observed temperatures through 2010. Adapted from Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010) by SkepticalScience.com

Jones et al. (2012) (PDF available here) arrived at a nearly identical result, with cooling from another Dalton and Maunder minimum at 0.09°C and 0.26°C, respectively. Similarly, a new paper by Anet et al. (2013) found that a grand solar minimum will cause no more than 0.3°C cooling over the 21st century.

Consistent with these previous studies, Meehl et al. (2013) (PDF available here) estimate a Maunder Minimum would cause about 0.26°C cooling, but as soon as solar activity began to rise again, that cooling would be offset by solar warming. This is a key point, because a grand solar minimum would not be a permanent change. These solar minima last for a few decades, but eventually solar activity rises once again. Thus any cooling caused by a solar minimum would only be temporary.

The cooling effect of a grand solar minimum can also be estimated very easily without the aid of climate models, because the change in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface is directly proportional to the temperature change it causes. Performing this calculation yields the same result as the model-based research: approximately 0.3°C cooling from another Maunder-type grand solar minimum. Click here to see the details behind the calculation.

The Heating of the Deep Oceans

In the Jyllands-Posten article, Svensmark also disputes the data showing the accelerated accumulation of heat in the deep oceans.

This is an increasingly common argument made by climate contrarians, and a bit of a strange one. The data are what they are - we've measured the deep ocean warming, including with reliable instruments on Argo buoys for close to a decade now. Even if we couldn't explain how the heat got there, it's there.

"How can the ocean below 700 meters be heated up, without the upper ocean warming up accordingly?"

5-year averages of ocean heat content 0-700 meters (red) and 0-2000 meters (black), from the National Oceanographic Data Center

But let's address the question anyway - do we expect to have seen some obvious indication of heat being transferred from the shallow to deep ocean layers?

It's certainly not clear that we should. Consider the analogy of a bathtub. Water from the faucet represents heat entering the shallow ocean layer. Water exiting the drain represents heat leaving the shallow oceans and entering the deep oceans. The water level in the bathtub represents the heat in the shallow ocean layer (which is what we measure).

If the amount of water entering the tub from the faucet is the same as the amount of water draining out of the tub, the water level in the tub won't change. Yet the water still flows down the drain. Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has discussed this point, summarized here.

In short, we wouldn't necessarily see the heat being transferred through the shallow to the deep oceans. However, there has been plenty of warming of the shallow oceans that could have been transferred to the deeper oceans. In our case, the water is flowing into the tub faster than it's draining out - the shallow oceans are warming fast, as the figure above illustrates.

Svensmark Gets Ocean Warming Wrong

Unfortunately Svensmark appears to be unfamiliar with this ocean heating data, saying,

This is just totally wrong, even if we ignore the rapid warming of the deep oceans (as is clear from a simple examination of the figure above). The ocean heat content data can be downloaded from the National Oceanographic Data Center here. The heating trend since 2003 in the upper 700 meters of oceans is equivalent to nearly 1 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonation per second (plus another 3 per second in the deep oceans). Both the shallow and deep oceans are accumulating a whole lot of heat, with no signs of slowing whatsoever. If anything, the heating of the oceans and the planet as a whole is accelerating.

"The thousands of buoys that we have deployed after 2003 to measure the ocean temperature, have not registered any temperature rise."

Human Influence on Climate Change is Bigger than the Sun's

The bottom line is that the sun and the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth are very stable. Even during the Maunder and Dalton grand solar minima, global cooling was relatively small - smaller than the amount of global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions over the past century.

A new grand solar minimum would not trigger another LIA; in fact, the maximum 0.3°C cooling would barely make a dent in the human-caused global warming over the next century. While it would be enough to offset to about a decade's worth of human-caused warming, it's also important to bear in mind that any solar cooling would only be temporary, until the end of the solar minimum.

The science is quite clear that the human influence on climate change has become bigger than the sun's. At this point, speculation about another mini ice age is pure fantasy.

[whitewind]

Australian floods of 2010 and 2011 caused global sea level to drop

Puzzled oceanographers who wondered where the sea level rise went for 18 months now have their answer – it went to Australia

www.theguardian.com

Friday 23 August 2013 20.38 AEST

An aerial view of flood waters around Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia,

on 6 December 2010. Photograph: Les Smith/pool/EPA

Rain - in effect, evaporated ocean - fell in such colossal quantities during the Australian floods in 2010 and 2011 that the world's sea levels actually dropped by as much as 7mm.

Rainwater normally runs swiftly off continental mountain ranges, pours down rivers, collects in aquifers and lakes and then winds across floodplains into the sea. But Australia, as any Australian will proudly claim, is different.

Rain that falls in the outback of the largest island - also the smallest continent - tends to dribble away into inland waterways and seemingly get lost, without ever making it to the coast, or to collect in shallow inland seas and stay there till it evaporates.

"It is a beautiful illustration of how complicated our climate system is", says John Fasullo, of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. "The smallest continent in the world can affect sea level worldwide. Its influence is so strong that it can temporarily overcome the background trend of rising sea levels that we see with climate change."

Fasullo and colleagues outline the drama of the vanishing sea levels in Geophysical Research Letters. Although there are daily, seasonal and annual variations, sea levels worldwide have been creeping up by 3mm a year on average, as a consequence of ocean warming and glacial melting.

But in 2010, sea levels mysteriously began to drop by 7mm, and stayed lower than expected for 18 months. This really was unexpected: global average temperatures had not dropped, greenhouse emissions had continued to increase, glaciers had continued to melt.

No simple business.

But surface waters in the eastern Pacific were affected by a cyclic cooling phenomenon called La Niña: this coincided with two other climatic phenomena known to the weathermen as the Southern Annular Mode and the Indian Ocean Dipole. The resulting cocktail of atmospheric energy combined to gather awesome quantities of water in the atmosphere and then dump it over Australia: in all, 300mm above the normal rate.

This water notoriously hit Queensland first in December 2010 and three quarters of the Australian state was declared a disaster zone. But then the water got caught up in what the authors called "Australia's expansive arheic and endorheic basins". This is another way of saying the water stayed on land, trapped in salt lakes, to evaporate slowly.

Meanwhile, with all that water soaked up in the arid landscape, the sea levels actually began to fall, unexpectedly, and to stay low before once more resuming their ominous and potentially destructive rise. Australia is now hit by drought, and ocean levels now seem to be rising even faster, at 10mm a year.

The scientists pieced together the chain of events by studying data from satellites called Grace, that measure changes in the Earth's gravity, floating monitors called Argo that measure ocean temperature and salinity, and satellite altimeters that constantly measure changes in sea level. Such research is a reminder once again that climate research is a complicated business, and that Australia, once again, is a most unusual place.

"No other continent has this combination of atmospheric set-up and topography", says Fasullo. "Only in Australia could the atmosphere carry such heavy tropical rains to such a large area, only to have those rains fail to make their way to the ocean."

[whitewind]

Fuckin LOL

 

[Optimystic]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23916217

sux

Edited September 2, 2013 by Spine Collector

[waterboy 2.0]

Amid Drought, Explaining Colorado’s Extreme Floods Flash floods in Boulder area may also have ties to fires and climate change.

A home and car are stranded after a flash flood in Coal Creek destroyed the bridge near Golden, Colorado, September 12, 2013. Scientists say drought, fires, and global warming may have helped spur the flood.

Photograph by Rick Wilking, Reuters

Brian Clark Howard

National Geographic

Published September 14, 2013

This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.

University of Colorado, Boulder law school professor Brad Udall has long written and lectured about water issues in the American West, but this week’s Colorado floods have brought the subject to his doorstep.

Four people have lost their lives in flooding this week that has engulfed swaths of Colorado and that has forced thousands to evacuate their homes.

Udall, director of the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment says that the Boulder area (see map) has received more rain in the past three days (up to 15 inches, or 38 centimeters) than the previous precipitation record for a whole month.

Udall’s house sits about 30 feet (9 meters) from a creek that is normally dry this time of year. In the past two days, he said the creek rose more than five feet (1.5 meters), and has become a raging stream that’s 20 feet (6 meters) wide.

“[Thursday] night I had a hard time going to sleep because of the ominous rumblings of large boulders tumbling down the creek bed,” Udall said. His house narrowly escaped major damage, but many neighbors weren’t so lucky.

U.S. President Barack Obama declared an emergency for Boulder, Larimer, and El Paso counties on Friday and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has deployed four rescue teams to the area, the most ever in the state.

Just as troubling as all the damage, Udall says, is that this week’s floods do not fit into the usual pattern of high water in the West.

The floods were not the result of springtime rains or intense summer thunderstorms that quickly dump large amounts of rain in concentrated areas, such as the 1976 Big Thompson or 1997 Fort Collins floods.

“This was a totally new type of event: an early fall widespread event during one of the driest months of the year,” Udall said.

So what explains the anomaly?

Sandra Postel, National Geographic’s Freshwater Fellow, said that the long-term drought that has parched the area and gripped much of the Colorado River Basin over the past 14 years may be partly to blame for the severity of the floods.

Drought tends to harden the soil, she said. When rains do come, less of the water can absorb into the ground, so it quickly runs off the land.

Similarly, fires can lead to worse flooding, because they remove vegetation that can slow down and trap rainfall, Postel said. (See “Fire and Rain: The One-Two Punch of Flooding After Blazes.”) In 2012, the Boulder area was afflicted by the Flagstaff Fire. In 2010, the Fourmile Canyon fire caused damage to Boulder County worth $217 million.

Scientists have warned that increasing frequency and severity of wildfires and droughts may be symptoms of climate change, as much of the planet warms. That, in turn, can lead to more floods.

In June, President Obama told an audience at Georgetown University, “Droughts and fires and floods, they go back to ancient times. But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet.”

Udall said that while current science can’t pin any particular extreme weather event to climate he change, this week’s flooding is likely a reflection of global warming, at least in part.

The connection, he said, “might be 10 percent or it might be 90 percent, but it isn't zero percent and it isn’t 100 percent.”

Udall added that warmer air means more moisture can be held by clouds, which can lead to more rain.:“As the climate warms further, the hydrologic cycle is going to get more intense.”

“Between the fires last year and this year, the unprecedented and continuing drought in the Colorado River, and now this shocking event,” he continued, “climate change feels very real to me.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130913-colorado-flood-boulder-climate-change-drought-fires/#

For you Dolos

[Halcyon Daze]

This one's for you too Dolos

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

The 5 stages of climate denial are on display ahead of the IPCC report

Climate contrarians appear to be running damage control in the media before the next IPCC report is published

 

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and The Australian are providing the media coverage for climate contrarian damage control. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is due out on September 27th, and is expected to reaffirm with growing confidence that humans are driving global warming and climate change. In anticipation of the widespread news coverage of this auspicious report, climate contrarians appear to be in damage control mode, trying to build up skeptical spin in media climate stories. Just in the past week we've seen:

• The David Rose Mail on Sunday piece that treated scientific evidence in much the way bakers treat pretzel dough.
• Dr. John Christy interviewed by the Daily Mail;
• Christy's colleague Dr. Roy Spencer in The Christian Post;
• Andrew Montford in Rupert Murdoch's The Australian;
• Matt Ridley in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal; and
• Bjorn Lomborg in The Washington Post.

Interestingly, these pieces spanned nearly the full spectrum of the 5 stages of global warming denial.

Stage 1: Deny the Problem Exists

Often when people are first faced with an inconvenient problem, the immediate reaction involves denying its existence. For a long time climate contrarians denied that the planet was warming. Usually this involves disputing the accuracy of the surface temperature record, given that the data clearly indicate rapid warming.

In the 1990s, Christy and Spencer created a data set of lower atmosphere temperatures using measurements from satellite instruments. These initially seemed to indicate that the atmosphere was not warming, leading Christy, Spencer, and their fellow contrarians to declare that the problem didn't exist. Unfortunately, it turned out that their data set contained several biases that added an artificial cooling trend, and once those were corrected, it was revealed that the lower atmosphere was warming at a rate consistent with surface temperature measurements.

Most climate contrarians have come to accept that the planet has warmed significantly. Unfortunately many have regressed back into Stage 1 denial through the new myth that global warming magically stopped 15 years ago (most recently exemplified by David Rose in the Mail on Sunday). The error in that argument involves ignoring about 98 percent of the warming of the planet, most of which goes into heating the oceans. When we account for all of the data, global warming actually appears to be accelerating.

Global heat accumulation data, from Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

David Rose also doubled-down on his Arctic sea ice decline denial this weekend, suggesting melts in the 1920s were just as large as today's. Sorry David, the data debunk your denial again.

Average July through September Arctic sea ice extent 1870–2008 from the University of Illinois (Walsh & Chapman 2001 updated to 2008) and observational data from NSIDC for 2009–2012. Stage 2: Deny We're the Cause

Once people move beyond denying that the problem exists, they often move to the next stage, denying that we're responsible. John Christy and Roy Spencer took this approach by disputing the accuracy of global climate models in The Daily Mail and The Christian Post, respectively. Spencer was quite explicit about this:

Christy and Spencer made their case by comparing the outputs of 73 climate models to satellite temperature measurements, and showing that the models seemed to predict more warming than has been observed. But the comparison was not of surface temperatures, or of the lowermost layer of the atmosphere, or even any measurement global average temperatures. They specifically looked at measurements of the temperature of the middle troposphere (TMT) in the tropics.

...we deny "that most [current climate change] is human-caused, and that it is a threat to future generations that must be addressed by the global community."

There's certainly nothing wrong with examining this particular subset of temperature data, but it's a bit of an odd choice on its face. The real problem lies in the fact that satellite measurements of TMT are highly uncertain. In fact, estimates of the TMT trend by different scientific groups vary wildly, despite using the same raw satellite data.

Another problem is that the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere) is cooling – an expected consequence of the increased greenhouse effect. But some of the cooling stratosphere bleeds into the TMT data, leading to another cool bias. While there is a discrepancy between model simulations and measurements of tropical troposphere temperatures, it's not clear how much (if any) is due to the models being wrong, and how much is due to errors in the measurements. As a U.S. Climate Change Science Program report co-authored by John Christy concluded,

 

"This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open."

 

However, in mainstream media interviews and editorials, Christy and Spencer always fail to mention the possibility that the problem could lie more in the measurements than the models, which frankly is intellectually dishonest. Additionally, climate models have done very well in projecting long-term global surface temperature changes.

Stage 2 Consensus Denial

In Murdoch's The Australian, Andrew Montford took a different approach to deny that we're the cause of the problem, attacking the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Specifically he attacked the Cook et al. (2013) study finding 97 percent consensus on this question in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

In order to deny the consensus, Montford employed the Climategate strategy, using material stolen during a hacking of the private Skeptical Science discussion forum. He then pulled quotes out of context to claim the study was "a public relations exercise," because we discussed how to effectively communicate our consensus results. In reality, the comments Montford used to support this argument were made after we had preliminary results reviewing nearly 14,000 peer-reviewed abstracts that found only 24 rejecting the human-caused global warming consensus.

Montford's article demonstrates the inherent dangers in quoting illegally obtained private correspondence. First, there is the obvious ethical issue of republishing private correspondence obtained through an illegal act. Second, using isolated quotes extracted from private conversations runs the risk of taking comments out of context and misrepresenting the facts.

In any case, we have set up a public ratings system so that anybody can read and rate the scientific abstracts. If you don't believe the vast body of evidence of an expert consensus on human-caused global warming, test it for yourself. Moreover, the scientist ratings of their own papers – independent of our abstract ratings – also resulted in a 97 percent consensus.

Stage 3: Deny It's a Problem

Once they've progressed through the first two stages and admitted global warming is happening and human-caused, contrarians generally move on to Stage 3, denying it's a problem. Lomborg and Ridley did their best Tony the Tiger impressions in The Washington Post and Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, respectively, arguing that global warming is 'Grrrrreat!' (or at least nothing to worry about).

I've previously discussed why this argument is a complete risk management failure. When faced with a potentially catastrophic outcome for something as important as the global climate, it's a no-brainer to take action to make sure we avoid that possible outcome. Moreover, Lomborg's and Ridley's arguments are based on cherry picking data. For example, Lomborg talks about how droughts have not worsened in the United States, according to the IPCC, but fails to mention that the IPCC predicts that US droughts will intensify over the next century.

In his editorial, Ridley takes a rosy view about the impact of climate change on crop yields that is not supported by the scientific research. He argues that climate impacts won't be bad in a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, but as Climate Progress reports, the scientist on whose work Ridley based this argument previously explained,

 

"In his article, Mr. Ridley is just plain wrong about future global warming."

 

Moreover, by painting an unjustifiably rosy picture and thus misleading the public, he's helping to ensure that we'll blow past that middling greenhouse gas emissions scenario (which requires significant emissions reductions efforts) and commit ourselves to much worse climate change consequences.

Stage 4: Deny We can Solve It

In his editorial, Roy Spencer bounced between the second and fourth stages of global warming denial, also claiming that solving the problem is too expensive and will hurt the poor. In reality the opposite is true.

Spencer specifically attacked renewable energy like wind power as being too expensive. In reality, wind power is already cheaper than coal, even without considering the added climate damage costs from coal carbon emissions. When including those very real costs, solar power is also already cheaper than coal. Additionally, the poorest countries are generally the most vulnerable to climate change. Listening to Spencer and continuing to cause rapid climate change is what will really hurt the poor.

Stage 5: It's too Late

Stage 5 global warming denial involves arguing that it's too late to solve the problem, so we shouldn't bother trying (though few climate contrarians have reached this level). Unfortunately this stage can be self-fulfilling. If we wait too long to address the problem, we may end up committing ourselves to catastrophic climate change.

The good news is that we still have time to avoid a catastrophic outcome. The more emissions reductions we can achieve, the less the impacts of climate change will be. The challenge lies in achieving those greenhouse gas emissions reductions when Rupert Murdoch's media empire and other news outlets are spreading climate misinformation and denial.

[Dreamwalker.]

Achilles' heel of ice shelves is beneath the water

Explore further: Warm ocean drives most Antarctic ice shelf loss, research shows

More information: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12567

Edited November 14, 2014 by Dreamwalker.

[woof woof woof]

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2535

[whitewind]

Ooer the new IPCC report is out and it's SEVERE.

Yet we know the IPCC is an ultra-conservative government organisation which only publishes material which is guaranteed to be verifiable on all counts, and signed off by all organisation - none of the more worrying reports and discoveries are included.

Suffice to say, the situation is far worse than the report admits. We're f*cked.

[Halcyon Daze]

Suffice to say, the situation is far worse than the report admits. We're f*cked.

You're starting to sound like someone in the final stage of denial i.e. "There's nothing we can do, we're fucked"

We've just gotta keep working hard mate, public consensus takes a while to turn, but we've gotta be right there to move when the opportunity eventually presents itself.

We all need a bit of cheering up right now

[whitewind]

I'm not in denial. I'm a realist. I know how the world works, just because I have fought against this shit all my life doesn't mean I don't realise I am fighting a losing battle. It's been the same since day 1 30 odd thousand years ago or whatever, only we're hitting so many walls right now something will break. What will it be? A lot of people are betting on climate change, but it could be peak oil, world war 3, too much untreated pollution, a rampant disease - hitting us or our food supply - or more than one thing at a time. Stable economic growth isn't in the cards any more. Population growth isn't either. It's idiotic, yet it's still happening.

The only way out of this is an economic revolution, or crazy engineering. I'm laying my bets on crazy engineering. I just hope we're smart enough and able to do something before it's too late. I'm just going to talk to some young engineers set them on the right path . But, we're on the path of needing to engineer ourselves out of every single disaster that ever happens, and we have to be up for all of them. The way we're handling this one right now, I'd say "not a chance in hell".

In the meantime, biodiversity is well and truly fucked. Has been for a long time, just getting worse. The latest utter bollocks to come out of the scientific community is to GM rare and endangered species. What all of them? Are you fucking stupid? We could do a handful, but we're losing thousands. That's way out of our ability, you're just grabbing for cash/ For fucks sake.

We are like yeast in a jar. So dumb. Face it We're a fucking joke. Still, I like some people and I have an amazing daughter so it's worth carrying on the fight against utter stupidity. At least I can say I tried, pitiful though my efforts are.

[whitewind]

Sorry Halcyon Daze. I actually meant to be a cheerleader and say

"WE CAN DO IT"

[Halcyon Daze]

LOL, I feel the same way, trust me. I'm off on walkabout again soon, hopefully forget all my woes for a while.

Not a good time to be a adventuring nature lover, everywhere I go people tell me the weather has gone crazy and everything's changing.

It's a beautiful world full of bad, bad people...