UN says 2013's extreme weather is due to warming earth (Page 2)

Somewhat topical:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/03/28/un-author-says-upcoming-climate-report-alarmist-pulls-out-team/

The part that bothers me is when dissenting minds bail out or are forced out.  Science is all about bringing all sides of view to the table based on their merits.

This quote at the end of the article resonates with me: "It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them," 

I often fall back on two things in the AGW debate.  One, I'm not convinced that CO2 is the cause of the warming and two "so what" when it comes to AGW because there are good things and bad things to a warming planet and the good appear to outweigh the bad.  The "alarmists" only focus and exaggerate the bad things and doing things to "stop the warming".  Why is the temperature in 1950 the "perfect temperature"? How is the .5° C temperature increase from 1925 to 1944 mostly attributed to normal variability, but the .5° C temperature increase from 1978 to 1998 is all man made CO2 and putting us on a path of destruction?

Fox News has a Science page?

Huh.

Tol told Reuters the report plays down the possible economic benefits of low levels of warming, such as fewer deaths among the elderly in warmer winters and increased crop production in some regions.

This statement is pretty telling.  Elderly in what parts of the world? Crop production in what parts of the world?  Certainly his statement isn't talking about the elderly and crop growing regions in Africa, India, and large sections of China, and mostly in extreme poverty.  The reason most of his scientific peers don't want to talk about the "positives" is that it pretty much negates the value of people who are already struggling and have a history of being screwed by white, ethnocentric, capitalist interests.

Tony, most of the reports I have seen show catastophic and irreversible damage with anything more than two degrees celsius increase. Even in places like Iowa and Nebraska :)  I think the concern is that any warming sets us up for an inevitable slide down a slippery slope.

Not to mention he sea level rise that will displace a very large portion of the earth's population

BRING ON THE WARMING!!!!

(shrooms.png)

Naw....the time table is more like it was when I was a kid.  I think the greys will come up next week, yellows will be 2nd week in April or even a bit later.  Fully one month behind the first I found the last few years.  Probably near the end of April up by you.

Yes.  In "normal" years, that's exactly right.

Our soil temp is at 36 now.  It will be interesting to see if we get up there by the end of April.  Jeez, I hope so.

This year is crazy. We're still collecting sap, and we're usually done with that by the second or third week in Feb.

The woods will still be pretty bare when turkey season starts here....hasn't been that way in a while.  I'm taking Brooke to kill her first this year to that should be a challenge getting her to sit still and shut up with green-up as late as it is.  It's been so long since we had a "normal" Winter like this one was that I forgot what the timetable is supposed to look like.

You guys have had a "normal" winter?  Our 90 day temp averages are over 9 degrees below "normal".

Maybe you should take Brooke up to Omaha.  I could give you this address. Maybe they'd let you set up behind those sliding glass doors :)

(O-town turkeys.jpg)

From what I can tell, past IPCC reports were pretty heavily criticized for actually downplaying the risks and representing too conservative of a view. The first AR5 report which came out last year was on the science and overall followed that trend. Because of the requirement to reach a consensus and the general conservativeness of scientists it tends to if anything understate the risks. The upcoming report is on the risks of climate change, so by it's nature is going to sound more 'alarmist'. For one thing, it's because there are a lot of really good reasons to be alarmed, and second, because when talking about risks, it's better to to include everything, even if it's unlikely, rather than to leave something out that you later realize you should have considered. It's the same thing when you're doing any kind of risk planning, whether it's for a rescue operation or your companies' business environment next year. It seems like this guy's upset because in a report that's supposed to focus on risks, they're focusing too much on risks...

This is certainly the winter I remember as a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's so yeah, for me, it's a return to normal.  Admittedly, I have no idea what "normal" is anymore when it comes to weather.....because everybody seems to think nothing is anymore.  I remember weather from back when it WAS "normal", and Al Gore hadn't yet invented the internet and carbon credits.

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

Originally posted by switch

You guys have had a "normal" winter?  Our 90 day temp averages are over 9 degrees below "normal".

Maybe you should take Brooke up to Omaha.  I could give you this address. Maybe they'd let you set up behind those sliding glass doors

 

This is certainly the winter I remember as a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's so yeah, for me, it's a return to normal.  Admittedly, I have no idea what "normal" is anymore when it comes to weather.....because everybody seems to think nothing is anymore.  I remember weather from back when it WAS "normal", and Al Gore hadn't yet invented the internet and carbon credits.

That's the cool thing about recorded 90 day winter temps--it doesn't matter what people "remember" or "think" is normal; there's just normal as defined by the averages, and then there's above and below that

Well, I remember ice skating and playing hockey every winter on a lake by where I grew up.......EVERY WINTER, seemed perfectly normal growing up (actually, it was normal, and had been for generations of people here).....this was the first year in 24 years that the ice got thick enough to skate on. 

Science is great, so is personal experience, that's the cool thing about being there.  

Your 90 day winter temps this year could have been 12 degrees or 31 degrees and your pond would have frozen, but I bet one of those is above normal and one is below.

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

Originally posted by switch

You guys have had a "normal" winter?  Our 90 day temp averages are over 9 degrees below "normal".

Maybe you should take Brooke up to Omaha.  I could give you this address. Maybe they'd let you set up behind those sliding glass doors

 

This is certainly the winter I remember as a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's so yeah, for me, it's a return to normal.  Admittedly, I have no idea what "normal" is anymore when it comes to weather.....because everybody seems to think nothing is anymore.  I remember weather from back when it WAS "normal", and Al Gore hadn't yet invented the internet and carbon credits.

That's the cool thing about recorded 90 day winter temps--it doesn't matter what people "remember" or "think" is normal; there's just normal as defined by the averages, and then there's above and below that

Well, I remember ice skating and playing hockey every winter on a lake by where I grew up.......EVERY WINTER, seemed perfectly normal growing up (actually, it was normal, and had been for generations of people here).....this was the first year in 24 years that the ice got thick enough to skate on. 

Science is great, so is personal experience, that's the cool thing about being there.  

Haha--did you have to walk uphill both ways to get to the pond?

Your 90 day winter temps this year could have been 12 degrees or 31 degrees and your pond would have frozen, but I bet one of those is above normal and one is below.

So you think a 3000 acre lake freezes solid enough for thousands of people to skate on at 31 degrees, huh?  LMAOOOOOOOO 

100's of people around that lake used to have ice boats too.....now nobody does.  It used to be normal to skae near them and watch them race.....that hasn't happened in decades.  It was "normal" back then.  

Same as mushrooms......my log shows first finds the last 10 years all before 3/15.  Not normal, but no graph needed, or science.

I wonder how people hundreds of years ago got by.....you know, before all the smart people came along. LOL

Yeah, this year was below normal. So were many of those winters in the 60s and 70s you remember.

(MO average winter temp.jpg)

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

100's of people around that lake used to have ice boats too.....now nobody does.  It used to be normal to skae near them and watch them race.....that hasn't happened in decades.  It was "normal" back then.  

Same as mushrooms......my log shows first finds the last 10 years all before 3/15.  Not normal, but no graph needed, or science.

I wonder how people hundreds of years ago got by.....you know, before all the smart people came along. LOL

Well, I know it would have to be cold enough for hell to freeze over for you to concede a point

Yeah, this year was below normal. So were many of those winters in the 60s and 70s you remember.

That's the funny thing about graphs and stats......and scientists too for that matter.  I like your graph......it's a good illustration of the fact that not a single year on that graph is "normal".....there is only above and below "normal".  You're right, I won't concede that if it NEVER happens it's  "normal". 

Gotta head to a track meet.....happy sciencing. LOL 

I enjoyed a normal winter this year, it was good to see some of the old haunts back to normal.

Normality is relative to your frame of reference. Compared to the 70's this is normal. Compared to the 2000's this is cold. Compared to the history of the world we don't have data. So really whether or not we call it "normal" is inconsequential.

To establish below normal, we need to establish normal. That's what the graph does, and this winter is below normal and those winters you remember from the 60s and 70s were below normal. 

One thing is for sure an increase of 2 degrees Celsius would cause changes, but the interesting part is what evidence is out there to suggest that it's going to warm that much?  Remember in 1988 Dr. Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies told the US Congress that the world would warm by 1° every 20 years till 2050 and implied a 6° C increase by 2100.  Many models have come and gone since this initial prediction and they all have been trending downward due to their assumed value of carbon dioxide forcing.  The latest "alarmist consensus" is around 2° C for the next 100 years.  However, even in the latest IPCC report they revised their projections downward yet again because of the real world data not lining up with the models.  Their latest project drops their 30 year projection to .3-.7C° and say the warming is "more likely to be at the lower end of that range".  If that ends up being accurate the warming of the 21st century will be pretty close to the 20th century overall and I"m pretty sure we didn't have worldwide devastation as a result.

The earth has warmed and cooled naturally throughout its history and it will continue to do the same no matter if we stop emitting CO2 or not.  I absolutely agree that CO2 is a contributing factor, but I feel the real world evidence shows that it is a minor player vs. what the alarmists want us all to believe.  Scientists can project whatever they want, but it has to be validated by empirical data at some point.  The IPCC claims to be 95% confident that human carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for the majority of the .5° C  warming since 1950, but at the same time they content that the .5° C warming from 1900-1946 was natural variation.

Here's two identical scaled diagrams of global temperature.  One is from 1895 to 1946 when the warming was natural and the other is from 1947 to 2008 when the warming was primarily caused by CO2.  Which is which and if CO2 is the primary cause of the latter then what was the cause of the first?

Here's another fun diagram of where we're at on a much longer term scale.  We've been on an upward trend since the little ice age of ~1350 - 1850.

The IPCC and pretty much all legitimate climate scientists agree that there has been no increase in temperatures since the late 90's and that the predicted warming between 1998 to 2012 is much smaller than the trend from 1998 to 2012.  That's based on factual data, so there's no arguing it.
Scientists are still troubled by the pause and trying to explain it.  The most prevalent theory is deep ocean heat absorption as a cause.  I like Dr. Lindzen from MIT's response:
“I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,”

“Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean, however, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.”

“However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability, thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.”

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Left Brain

100's of people around that lake used to have ice boats too.....now nobody does.  It used to be normal to skae near them and watch them race.....that hasn't happened in decades.  It was "normal" back then.  

Same as mushrooms......my log shows first finds the last 10 years all before 3/15.  Not normal, but no graph needed, or science.

I wonder how people hundreds of years ago got by.....you know, before all the smart people came along. LOL

Well, I know it would have to be cold enough for hell to freeze over for you to concede a point

Yeah, this year was below normal. So were many of those winters in the 60s and 70s you remember.

That's the funny thing about graphs and stats......and scientists too for that matter.  I like your graph......it's a good illustration of the fact that not a single year on that graph is "normal".....there is only above and below "normal".  You're right, I won't concede that if it NEVER happens it's  "normal". 

Gotta head to a track meet.....happy sciencing. LOL 

I enjoyed a normal winter this year, it was good to see some of the old haunts back to normal.

Darn those graphs, stats, and scientists--my memories and perceptions are infallible! 

To establish below normal, we need to establish normal. That's what the graph does, and this winter is below normal and those winters you remember from the 60s and 70s were below normal. 

Absolutely not true.  The graphs establish average, not normal.  You want me to believe that average is normal, when I know that normal ALWAYS occurs either above or below average, it has to.  In fact, in the case of temperature it's perfectly normal to be above or below avg.  It is, in fact, normal to be way below or above average, your graph proves it.

When I say that your mushrooms will pop somewhere very near the end of April, and you agree, I say that because in a normal winter like we are having, that's  when it will happen, by my experience.  

You can call it semantics, but it's really not.  In nature, average or abnormal rarely occurs.......normal rules.

Normal- The long-term average value of a meteorological element for a certain area. For example, "temperatures are normal for this time of year" Usually averaged over 30 years. http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/box/glossary.htm

I agreed that morels will come up at the end of April in a "normal," aka average year.  This is not one of those. Not where I live. Not where you live.