Since the beginning of human civilization, our atmosphere contained about 275 ppm of carbon dioxide. That is the planet “on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Beginning in the 18th century, humans began to burn coal, gas, and oil to produce energy and goods. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere began to rise, at first slowly and now more quickly. Many of the activities we do every day like turning the lights on, cooking food, or heating our homes rely on energy sources that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. We’re taking millions of years worth of carbon, once stored beneath the earth as fossil fuels, and releasing it into the atmosphere. Right now we’re at 400 ppm, and we’re adding 2 ppm of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. Unless we are able to rapidly turn that around and return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk triggering tipping points and irreversible impacts that could send climate change spinning truly beyond our control. So far, we’ve experienced about 1 degree (Celsius) of warming, and the impacts are frightening. Glaciers everywhere are melting and disappearing fast, threatening the primary source of clean water for millions of people. Mosquitoes, who like a warmer world, are spreading into lots of new places, and bringing malaria and dengue fever with them. Drought is becoming much more common, making food harder to grow in many places. Sea levels have begun to rise, and scientists warn that they could go up as much as several meters this century. If that happens, many of the world’s cities, island nations, and farmland will be underwater. Meanwhile, the oceans are growing more acidic because of the CO2 they are absorbing, which makes it harder for animals like corals and clams to build their shells and exoskeletons. All around the globe, we’re stacking the deck for extreme weather — like hurricanes, typhoons, blizzards, and droughts — which exacerbates conflicts and security issues in regions that are already strapped for resources. The Arctic is sending us perhaps the clearest message that climate change is occurring much more rapidly than scientists had previously thought. In the summer of 2012, roughly half of the Arctic’s sea ice went missing (some scientists estimate that the total volume of summer sea ice loss may be as high as 80%). The entire Arctic region is undergoing drastic changes, threatening vital habitat for countless species (yes, including polar bears) and the livelihoods of many indigenous communities. This is also bringing us closer to dangerous tipping points, like the breakdown of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from quickening permafrost melt. This is the science of climate change. While much of the details are still being studied, one thing is no longer up for debate: our climate is changing profoundly and rapidly, and human activity is the cause. http://350.org/about/science/
"A theory that does not contain within it the terms of its own falsification is not a valid theory. If the planet Mercury's orbit did not vary by the number of degrees that Einstein's theory said it would, then Relativity would be unproven and Albert would have had to admit failure, as he indicated he would be willing to do. A weasel-word term like Climate Change, where any drought and any flood, any heat wave or cold wave, any storm or any clear sky, any melting or freezing, anywhere at any time, can be cited as evidence of industrial humans' culpability, and there is no defined criteria that would exculpate us, is not a valid theory; it is meaningless Catch-22 Heads-I-Win-Tails-You-Lose political propaganda." http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/climate_change_where_is_the_science.html
Most of the 1C rise are natural, but there's no question that the world has warmed. So let's carefully examine your individual claims as to why this is frightening. It's really hard for me to imagine a less productive place on this planet than a glacier. No food is grown there. Almost no animals or plants live there. In short, there is nothing frightening about glaciers melting and disappearing per se. Glaciers are created mostly by snowfall. If the planet warms up and the snow becomes rain the water will still fall and it will still provide water to the people downstream. All the glacier does is slow it down. Humans do the same thing, but more efficiently, with dams. And the world is building thousands of dams. These dams also provide hydroelectricity. (1) Malaria is not now, and never has been, a disease only of tropical climates. Here's a chart showing the regions in Europe effected by the malaria epidemic during the 1st world war (1.5 million soldiers caught the disease): Malaria’s contribution to World War One – the unexpected adversary Bernard J Brabin Malaria Journal 2014, 13:497 (16 December 2014) http://www.malariajournal.com/content/pdf/1475-2875-13-497.pdf (1) Only a few species of mosquito carry malaria. (2) World reduction in malaria are associated with pesticide use and improving standards of living, not changes in temperature. Not true. Drought has been present throughout human history. For example, in the US, the worst droughts in recent memory were in the 1930s, far before CO2 reached its current high levels. And yet, somehow, food production continues to set annual all-time records despite the fact that the amount of land under cultivation is decreasing, LOL. Sea levels have been rising for about 300 years. They started when the climate turned at the Little Ice Age and have been rising ever since. This is all far before the present high levels of CO2. The present level of sea level rise is about 3.3 mm/year. There are 85 years between now and 2100. If sea level continues to rise at the same rate, the increase in sea level will be about 280mm which is a little less than a foot. Predictions that sea level rise is going to be "several meters" would require significant acceleration in sea level rise that is not seen in the modern data. The EPA is widely quoted in the alarmist literature as saying that a sea level rise of 0.66 meters will inundate 26,000 square km of land. I haven't found the original source at the EPA. If you have figures for how many km^2 of land will be inundated by various sea level rises, do share. But let's see how much land will be lost with those 26,000 km^2. Total land surface area of the earth is 148,940,000 km^2. So we're talking about an inundation of 0.017% over a time period of about 100 years. The land area loss will be about 0.00017% per year. The planet as a whole will hardly notice it. (This is the data from the alarmists!) And the increasing temperatures will open up vast areas now locked in permafrost. The reason we know you're pushing a political agenda is that you never mention any positive consequences of having more CO2. LOL! I guess you didn't see the latest news from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Now they're one of your government funded alarmist strongholds so of course they give a good scary slant on it, but the news is that coral is not, in fact, dying: Diverse Corals Persist, But Bioerosion Escalates in Palau's Low-pH Waters News Release, Woods Hole Oceanographic, June 5, 2015 ... A new study led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found that the coral reefs there seem to be defying the odds, showing none of the predicted responses to low pH except for an increase in bioerosion—the physical breakdown of coral skeletons by boring organisms such as mollusks and worms. The paper is published June 5, 2015, in the journal Science Advances. "Based on lab experiments and studies of other naturally low-pH reef systems, this is the opposite of what we expected," says lead author Hannah Barkley, a graduate student in the WHOI-MIT Joint Program in Oceanography. Experiments measuring corals' responses to a variety of low pH conditions have shown a range of negative impacts, such as fewer varieties of corals, more algae growth, lower rates of calcium carbonate production (growth), and juvenile corals that have difficulty constructing skeletons. "Surprisingly, in Palau where the pH is lowest, we see a coral community that hosts more species, and has greater coral cover than in the sites where pH is normal," says Anne Cohen, a coauthor on the study and Barkley's advisor at WHOI. "That's not to say the coral community is thriving because of the low pH, rather it is thriving despite the low pH, and we need to understand how." ... http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/PalauCorals Here. Let me share some biological facts with you and the idiots at Woods Hole. Most corals obtain the majority of their energy and nutrients from photosynthesis. As any dope smoking reefer fiend knows, a marijuana garden grows best when you provide it with a lot of CO2 (which is usually obtained by burning fossil fuels). The same thing applies to plants in the ocean. You have to be an idiot to be surprised when coral does better with high levels of CO2. Just like trees and algae, coral is made out of CO2. Increasing the CO2 levels decreases the cost of extracting it from the environment. Extreme weather is driven by temperature differences. In a warming world, most of the warming occurs at the poles. This decreases the temperature difference between the equator and poles and consequently decreases the amount of extreme weather. The bad science on this subject was mostly due to a few hurricanes that flooded some US cities. With weather on the news, the climate alarmists naturally tried to say that these things were a consequence of man's action. So they wrote up a series of articles on the subject. Here's what a recent peer reviewed article says about the subject: 7000 years of paleostorm activity in the NW Mediterranean Sea in response to Holocene climate events Sabatier, Dezileau, Colin, Briqueu, Bouchette, Martinez, Siani, Raynal and Grafenstein Quaternary Research, Volume 77, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 1-11 A high-resolution record of paleostorm events along the French Mediterranean coast over the past 7000 years was established from a lagoonal sediment core in the Gulf of Lions. Integrating grain size, faunal analysis, clay mineralogy and geochemistry data with a chronology derived from radiocarbon dating, we recorded seven periods of increased storm activity at 6300–6100, 5650–5400, 4400–4050, 3650–3200, 2800–2600, 1950–1400 and 400–50 cal yr BP (in the Little Ice Age). In contrast, our results show that the Medieval Climate Anomaly (1150–650 cal yr BP) was characterised by low storm activity. The evidence for high storm activity in the NW Mediterranean Sea is in agreement with the changes in coastal hydrodynamics observed over the Eastern North Atlantic and seems to correspond to Holocene cooling in the North Atlantic. Periods of low SSTs there may have led to a stronger meridional temperature gradient and a southward migration of the westerlies. We hypothesise that the increase in storm activity during Holocene cold events over the North Atlantic and Mediterranean regions was probably due to an increase in the thermal gradient that led to an enhanced lower tropospheric baroclinicity over a large Central Atlantic–European domain. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003358941100113X[/QUOTE]
American Association for the Advancement of Science "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society." (2006)3 American Chemical Society "Comprehensive scientific assessments of our current and potential future climates clearly indicate that climate change is real, largely attributable to emissions from human activities, and potentially a very serious problem." (2004)4 American Geophysical Union "Human‐induced climate change requires urgent action. Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years. Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes." (Adopted 2003, revised and reaffirmed 2007, 2012, 2013)5 American Medical Association "Our AMA ... supports the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report and concurs with the scientific consensus that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant." (2013)6 American Meteorological Society "It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide." (2012)7 American Physical Society "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." (2007)8 The Geological Society of America "The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s." (2006; revised 2010)9
The beloved aspen forests that shimmer across mountainsides of the American West could be doomed if emissions of greenhouse gases continue at a high level, scientists warned on Monday. That finding adds to a growing body of work suggesting forests worldwide may be imperiled by climate change. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/s...-by-2050s-scientists-say.html?ref=topics&_r=0 One in six of world's species faces extinction due to climate change – study New analysis reveals likely impact of global warming on plants and animals if we fail to take action, and comes ahead of crunch climate talks in Paris The study is the most comprehensive look yet at the impact of climate change on biodiversity loss, analysing 131 existing studies on the subject. The stresses on wildlife and their habitats from global warming is in addition to pressures such as deforestation, pollution and overfishing that have already seen the world lose half its animals in the past 40 years. “The risk if we continue on our current trajectory is very high. If you look out your window and count six species and think that one of those will potentially disappear, that’s quite profound,” said the study’s author, Mark C Urban, of the University of Connecticut. http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-faces-extinction-due-to-climate-change-study
THE most deadly weather-related disasters aren’t necessarily caused by floods, droughts or hurricanes. They can be caused by heat waves, like the sweltering blanket that’s taken over 2,500 lives in India in recent weeks. Temperatures broke 118 degrees in parts of the country. The death toll is still being tallied, and many heat-related deaths will be recognized only after the fact. Yet it’s already the deadliest heat wave to hit India since at least 1998 and, by some accounts, the fourth- or fifth-deadliest worldwide since 1900. These heat waves will only become more common as the planet continues to warm. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/o...bination-of-heat-and-humidity.html?ref=topics
[/QUOTE] Wow, what a steaming pile of vacuous horseshit. All those words and nothing of substance said. Impressive.
Two or four degrees C isn't enough to make anything go extinct. Plowing over vast quantities of now unused land on the planet so we can grow renewable fuels is devastating to the natural environment and will drive all kinds of things extinct. I mean really. What happened to all that land that Brazil now uses to grow sugarcane for renewable ethanol? Have you read what wind farms do to raptors?
You're trying to change the subject from "climate" to "weather". And instead of quoting from the peer reviewed literature, you're giving a link to the opinion pages of the NY Times, LOL. Eventually the heat wave of 2015 will enter the peer reviewed literature and you can quote it then. But it might not turn out how you like. Here's a peer reviewed article on the great India heat wave of 1999: Hottest April of the 20th century over north-west and central India Kalsi and Pareek India Meteorological Department, New Delhi, Current Science, Vol 80, Issue 07, 10 April 2001 ... Global warming has been discerned from studies on temperature fluctuations, which have revealed an increase of a few tenths of degrees in some places during the course of last 50 years or so. An attempt was made to see whether global warming was making anomalously hot spells more frequent and intense. Figure 5 shows the mean anomaly of average maximum temperatures of these 28 stations in different years. There is no systematic slow increase of mean anomaly as per global warming signal. The pronounced heating of 1999 cannot therefore be linked with global warming and is attributable to local anomalous circulation settling over India and its neighborhood. According to a recent WMO bulletin, 1999 as a whole has been in the series of anomalously hot years. This study indicates that only April 1999 and no other April in 1990s has been so hot. It shows an anomaly on the scale of a month. Again it is to be noted that April in 1892 was relatively hotter than 1999 over north-west and central India. ... http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Downloads/article_id_080_07_0867_0873_0.pdf