Once again the important question is being ignored? Will cutting CO2 emissions have anything to do with climate change? The science says no. What follows I have taken directly from Climatologist Roy Spencer's Website. http://www.drroyspencer.com Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of fourteen instruments flying on different satellites over the years. A discussion of the latest version (6.0) of the dataset is located here. The graph above represents the latest update; updates are usually made within the first week of every month. Contrary to some reports, the satellite measurements are not calibrated in any way with the global surface-based thermometer records of temperature. They instead use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch. Global Warming “Global warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution. Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far. But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800′s. It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankind’s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40. The “Holy Grail”: Climate Sensitivity Figuring out how much past warming is due to mankind, and how much more we can expect in the future, depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”. This is the temperature response of the Earth to a given amount of ‘radiative forcing’, of which there are two kinds: a change in either the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth, or in the infrared energy the Earth emits to outer space. The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S. You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low. The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’ influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably a closet ‘skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate. Climate change — it happens, with or without our help.
This is an interesting connection (assuming the connection is actually there) between El Nino and wind. I always thought this was a problem but that it was my imagination. I still believe the Sun is the ultimate answer. One thing that I think we will be forced to harness one day is the energy being generated in the core of of the earth. But I never hear a peep about it. US clean energy suffers from lack of wind http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/01/financial-times-us-clean-energy-suffers-from-lack-of-wind.html
Ricter see the following UT paper published in Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences. You can access it free of charge. Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Dustin M. Schroeder, Donald D. Blankenship, Duncan A. Young, and Enrica Quartini PNAS 2014 111 (25) 9070-9072; published ahead of print June 9, 2014, doi:10.1073/pnas.1405184111
In 2009, ABC News ran a special report on global warming that has to be seen to be believed. In short, utter catastrophe, and by, you guessed it, 2015. Just more nonsensical, made up out of whole cloth claptrap that we're supposed to forget they ever broadcast, and on to a new scaremongering report sometime in the near future. ===== In 2009 ABC News Predicted We All Be Dead By Now "ABC News ran a news special in 2009 called Earth 2100, a program warning its viewers about the dangers of climate change. ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff says the show “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.” Describing dangerous temperature levels and dropping agricultural production, the news package brings in The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen, who says, “There’s about one billion people who are malnourished. That number just continually grows.” The doomsday predictions for 2015 go further and include $12.00 for a gallon of milk and $9.00 a gallon for gasoline, if there is any gas at all that is left. Chris Cuomo, who teased the special at the time, said to Woodruff of the predictions, “I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?” Woodruff replies, “It’s very soon, you know. But all you have to do is look at the world today right today. You know, you’ve got gas prices going up. You got food prices going up. You’ve got extreme weather."
For the convenience of anyone interested, I am posting a link to the PDF of the Schroeder paper in PNAS that I mentioned in post #413 above. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9070.full.pdf
So volcanism explains the loss of ice mass in (part of) Antarctica, but is merely coincident with ice melting everywhere else on Earth?
Everywhere else? I'm afraid not. Only in the northern hemisphere generally. Time to look into the impact of axial tilt changes of the earth.
That is a good point, but aren't there other places in Antarctica (it's a big continent) where the ice cover is growing rather than receding. (I don't know the answer, but perhaps you will.) And another good point is that we can't separate this undersea geothermal activity from other climate effects. Geophysicists consider geothermal activity as a significant contributor to ocean thermal currents, to ocean temperature, and therefore to both climate and atmospheric CO2 concentration. Whereas CO2, because of convective mixing, is relatively uniform over the surface of the troposphere; climate change is not. The only reliable global temperature data is the satellite data, and it is inconclusive. Perhaps we should ask Sarah Palin what she thinks. On second thought, maybe that's not a good idea.
If the Pope and the rest of the priests want to have a political opinion on ANYTHING, they need a visit from the IRS. If I gave a shit what this pious asshole thought about climate change, immigration, whatever, I'd attend one of his fucked up churches. Pay the taxman like the rest of us, or STFU.