Um, the geese are migrating kinda early

[cgallery]

Very informative post, Anna. Thanks!

[mschrank]

Wow. As soon as I saw Sparkey's first comment, I said "uh-oh" I knew that either
a): I would feel inclined to jump in with a comment,
or
b): someone else would. Thank you Stormdog!

I just deleted a rambling couple of paragraphs because I want to maintain and stay in line with the civility this forum generally exhibits. I'll just say that I feel strongly about this issue, and that Stormdog is not alone.

[Ed62]

I expect there are a lot more people following this thread than you might believe. To me, it is an interesting thread.

It's hard for the average person to actually know what's going on. Everybody wants to put a spin on it to further themselves or their beliefs.

This is a topic that had a good chance of getting nasty replies. I'd like to personally thank the posters for respecting the rights of others to disagree with them, and keeping it civil. That's what makes this place so special.

Ed

[Black wallnut]

I shudder to think the opinion of my profession is based on how some of my colleagues act.

What exactly is your profession since you brought it up?

Great post Anna!!!

[Rand]

The fact that it's getting warmer is easily observed.
If you don't think so just ask he poor Polar Bears where the ice is to thin to hunt.
I see it every summer looking at Mt. Hood. It used to stay snow covered year round. Now it's all rock by July.

From the NOAA http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2912.htm
The annual average temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F above the 20th Century average and marked the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures. Each of the contiguous 48 states reported above-normal annual temperatures and, for the majority of states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895.

It's pretty clear to me that this is a big problem. I don't need to recount all the dire predictions of what may happen. Even if it's not caused by humans dumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases in to the atmosphere things could get pretty ugly.

Is it really inevitable? Can we do anything to slow down or mitigate the effects? Should we cut down every last tree and burn every last drop of oil?

I don't have the answers but maybe we should all buy real estate at 100 feet above current sea level in the hopes it will be waterfront property some day?

[Anna]

After thinking about it, I decided to clarify something about the IPCC and how it works.

The IPCC do have scientist-members (but their selection criteria is a whole other issue(. The process starts with IPCC staff members culling all the available literature about climate change, summarizing and organizing the results, and then writing the first draft. The draft is accessible to scientists worldwide who are invited to comment and submit suggestions for improvement. Each of the suggestions are considered and are either included or not in the final report. The lead scientist in each chapter, however, tend to use his research as the basis for the report itself (i.e. Mann and the hockey stick in 2001).

What we've been seeing generally, though, are the management "summaries for policy-makers." These summaries are written by bureaucrats, not so much by the scientists, and where there are careful language in the heart of the reports expressing uncertainty, the summaries favor absolutes. In earlier IPCC reports, the summaries and the scientific reports tend to show a huge disconnect. The UN "fixed" this by having the non-scientists write the conclusions in the management summaries first, and then telling the authors of the individual chapters of the report to conform their writing and science to the summary. Thus the Fourth IPCC summary came out in February this year, at least half-a-year ahead of the real report.

I can not find a well-respected climate scientist who is willing to sign his name to the current IPCC report. I am actually waiting for the final report to come out because the IPCC promised to name the scientists who peer-reviewed the reports. There have been several former scientist-members of the IPCC, however, who have openly criticized the process recently.

Lastly, the IPCC's rules make it possible for representatives of member-governments to negotiate the summary line by line and word for word.

That's why I'm very critical of the IPCC and do not regard it as a credible source of scientific knowledge.

[Black wallnut]

The fact that it's getting warmer is easily observed.
If you don't think so just ask he poor Polar Bears where the ice is to thin to hunt.
I see it every summer looking at Mt. Hood. It used to stay snow covered year round. Now it's all rock by July.

From the NOAA http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2912.htm
The annual average temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F above the 20th Century average and marked the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures. Each of the contiguous 48 states reported above-normal annual temperatures and, for the majority of states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895.

It's pretty clear to me that this is a big problem. I don't need to recount all the dire predictions of what may happen. Even if it's not caused by humans dumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases in to the atmosphere things could get pretty ugly.

Is it really inevitable? Can we do anything to slow down or mitigate the effects? Should we cut down every last tree and burn every last drop of oil?

I don't have the answers but maybe we should all buy real estate at 100 feet above current sea level in the hopes it will be waterfront property some day?

And not too far from Mt. Hood is Mt St. Helens which now has a glacier almost of the same mass (I could have this part wrong) as prior to its erruption in 1980. The main difference bing Mt. Hood is exposed to direct sunlight and St. Helens is mostly shaded in the crater. IIRC Hood is a bunch higher in elevation currently than St. Helens.

[Anna]

The fact that it's getting warmer is easily observed.
If you don't think so just ask he poor Polar Bears where the ice is to thin to hunt.

Rand, you have to read this. I believe you are referring to the famous picture of the polar bears stranded on a thin ice cap in the "middle of the ocean."

It turns out that the picture was shot in August, 2004, "when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming." They were also not far from the coast (polar bears are great swimmers) and didn't seem to be in much danger at all.

By the way, the polar bear population appears to be increasing.

[gsmittle]

What I like about this discussion....

...aside from the spirited discussion itself, is the fact nobody's calling anyone names. If this were some other forums, we'd all be insulting each other's mamas by now.

When the AC broke in my car in August, I experienced some serious global warming. Dang near melted the dash.

As for the geese: I'm in St. Louis, and I don't have much Goose Poop data yet. Could be they're pooping on the Illinois side...

g.

[JR]

My head is going to explode.

Is anyone actually arguing that we are not experiencing a gobal temperature rise? Are the reports we've seen about glaciers retreating behind observed or measurable historical boundaries actually fabrications? Is the arctic ice pack getting smaller or not? Anyone with a reasonable reference that will demonstrate the lie, please step forward.

I can see there being lots of reason to argue cause. But the reality ot temerature rise? Isn't this indisputable?

JR

[dlminehart]

I wouldn't be surprised if we're affecting the global climate. We're clearly affecting just about everything else around us. For example, look at how much trash is floating around in the ocean these days, how Chinese dust storms from overgrazing are causing respiratory problems in the Western US, and how the thinning of the protective ozone layer is resulting in more skin cancers.

If you scaled the earth's 8000 mile (x5280 = 42,240,000' = 506,880,000") diameter down to a 12" classroom globe, the 100,000' (or 1,200,000") depth of the bulk of the atmosphere would come down to 120/50688 = about 0.0201". In other words, on a 1' globe, the atmosphere is about as thick as 2 human hairs or two playing cards. From below, of course, it looks as if it might go on forever.

[Anna]

My head is going to explode.

Is anyone actually arguing that we are not experiencing a gobal temperature rise? Are the reports we've seen about glaciers retreating behind observed or measurable historical boundaries actually fabrications? Is the arctic ice pack getting smaller or not? Anyone with a reasonable reference that will demonstrate the lie, please step forward.

I can see there being lots of reason to argue cause. But the reality ot temerature rise? Isn't this indisputable?

JR

Antarctic ice is increasing.

Arctic ice retreating because of global warming.

Or maybe it's really part of the natural cycle. (Note the similar warming trend in the 30s and 40s. We don't have data for the amount of ice in the Arctic before the 60s or 70s, but we can infer from the temperature data. In other words, none of this is conclusive.)

As for temperature increase, the estimate is that the mean global temperature increased from 0.5 to 1.0 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years. In the United States, the temperature sensing stations are maintained by the USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network). On their website, they detailed how they "corrected" the raw data they get from the sensors. The cumulative effect of all their corrections come out to be about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Anna]

how the thinning of the protective ozone layer is resulting in more skin cancers.

"[T]he ozone hole is estimated to annually very slowly decrease in area by about 0.1 to 0.2 percent for the next five to 10 years." In fact, it's expected to fully recover by 2065.

[Ed62]

Just a few questions. How much of an increase in temperature will it take before some things are forever lost? And if and when that does occur, how far reaching will the impact be? Is it better to err on the safe side, and make changes to the way we live? If it is, how much would we have to change to be safe? I think most people would be willing to give up something, but I doubt many would be willing to give up very much unless they were absolutely sold on the idea that man is the problem.

Ed

[JR]

Antarctic ice is increasing.
Arctic ice retreating because of global warming.

Ok, both those articles make the case that there is warming. I'm happy to believe that. Now, whether it's caused by my choice of deodorant accelerant, I dunno.

I guess my take is that there is probably a kernel of truth to the idea that massive amounts of carbon emissions are bad, so we should do something about changing that. FWIW, I also believe we should strive to displace oil as our primary energy source - it's messy due to carbon emissions and politically volatile, too.

really part of the natural cycle.

The red dotted line looks like a 200 day SMA in a bull market. That's about as scientific as I'll ever get!