Global warming worry: Accelerating pace of change
Correction at 3:30 p.m. PST Thursday: Blame my Rust Belt ignorance. The Ohio river that burned is the Cuyahoga.
The retreat of the Jakobshavn Glacier on western Greenland is accelerating, Thompson said. Shown here are lines indicating the location of the end of the glacier starting in 1850 at the far left. The furthest yellow line on the right is 2000, and the two red lines are 2003 and, at far right, 2005.
(Credit: Lonnie Thompson/Ohio State University)SAN FRANCISCO--I've been spending some time at the the American Geophysical Union conference here, and I've had a recurring thought: When it comes to apocalyptic predictions, geophysicists have the Book of Revelations beat, hands down.
Sometime in the last few years, the idea that global warming is a reality and that it's caused in large measure by people has finally started sinking in. But perhaps because of the remaining skepticism, and more likely because of the fascinating research involved, scientists just can't leave the issue alone.
Global warming has been a major theme among the 14,500 scientists who have converged here for the 40th AGU conference. Seemingly, they can't get enough of it: A year after former Vice President Al Gore addressed conference attendees during the height of hype around his Inconvenient Truth documentary, organizers again gave the stage to an articulate speaker on the issue. This time it was Lonnie Thompson, an Ohio State University scientist who has spent innumerable hours drilling into icecaps at the world's highest elevations.
Lonnie Thompson at AGU
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)Global warming, a decades-old idea that posits certain greenhouse gases will keep heat from escaping into space, has moved gradually from a prediction to a measurable phenomenon. But for those who are inclined to feel comfort that scientists got it right, Thompson had sobering words on Wednesday evening: the pace of glacial melting is accelerating, and scientists don't have a handle on the new patterns.
"We're in unfamiliar territory," Thompson said. "The observed rapid changes in Greenland and Antarctica are not predicted. What we're seeing is fast glacier flow."
Thompson uses yaks to carry back each one of hundreds of six-foot ice core samples retrieved from holes drilled in glaciers.
(Credit: Lonnie Thompson/Ohio State University)Take the Jacobshavn Ice Stream, a glacier on the west side of Greenland that drains about 6.5 percent of the continent's massive ice sheet. Between 2000 and 2003, its rate of retreat nearly doubled. Scientists expected a slow and linear response to global warming, but instead the response has been fast and accelerating. Another example is the Qori Kalis Glacier in Peru, whose initial retreat rate around 1991 was about 6 meters per year but now is 60 meters per year.
"It's not just retreating. It's an exponential increase," he said.
Humanity has a lousy track record dealing with environmental crises before they become severe, he said, pointing as an example to Ohio's famously polluted Cuyahoga River.
"When did we do anything about that river? When it caught on fire," he said. "We've cleaned it up. Now there are walleye and pike in it. It wasn't that we couldn't do it; it was that we didn't have the political will to do it."
Compared to some crises, though, global warming poses long-term challenges because greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere 70 to 120 years after being emitted, he said.
This year, melting split the Furtwangler Glacier on Africa's Mt. Kilamanjaro into two halves.
(Credit: Lonnie Thompson/Ohio State University)Glaciers are only one reflection of overall climate trends, but Thompson believes they're an important one--especially the ones he's specialized in studying, those growing at the tops of high mountains in central latitudes rather than the vast expanses in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
"Glaciers, especially tropical glaciers, are the canaries in the coal mine for our global climate system," he said.
In his research, Thompson has spent 840 days above 18,000 feet, setting up camps and drilling out cores of ice from the glaciers. The ice cores record in tiny air bubbles volcanic activity and greenhouse gas levels; each year has its own layer that can be dated by characteristic patterns of dust deposition and by wet and dry seasons.
The ice core records are disappearing along with the glaciers, though. Several he's examined, for example, show evidence of above-ground thermonuclear bomb tests from the Soviet Union in the 1960s and the United States in the 1950s. But there's no evidence of either on the Naimona'nyi Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau.
"These glaciers are wasting from the surface down," Thompson said.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Is it good or bad? Good. Rice does not grow on glaciers.
Are humans causing it? I hope so.
The planet is in an Ice Age. The present climate is called an "Inter Glacial", though "Glacial Minimum" would be more accurate.
Know what's going to happen when the glaciers come back, as they eventually will?
Crops will fail. Famine world wide. Humans will eat every animal big enough to gather and either eat or burn almost all the vegetation. This is going to be worse than the dinosaur extinction.
Being able to warm the planet would prevent that.
that the world was cooling so quickly that we were headed for
another ice age.
Our planet has gone through something like 70 major climate
changes in the past 4000 years. It has been warming up and
cooling off long before the industrial age, and will continue to
do so whether the current batch of "Chicken Little's" buy their
carbon offsets or not.
We need to plan for the consequences of these inevitable
changes, not waste our time trying to stop them.
That cooling of the 40's to the 70's may or may not have been global in scale since data from the southern hemisphere is incomplete.
What is known is that the cooling was greater in the northern hemisphere during that time.
It is now generally accepted that this was caused by naturally and man-made aerosol's which reflect incoming solar radiation.
Efforts to reduce smog and acid rain have reduced the concentration of aerosol's in the atmosphere.
And before you ask, no, it has been shown attempting to offset greenhouse warming with aerosol cooling would not be effective.
And we dismiss because. Car insurance we need, but no precautions needed for *global* warming. Right. Why? Because we now have a culture that haws no respect for science, evidence-based decision making, or the ability to reason new things using the scientific method. Facts that are longer than a paragraph or sound-bite is dismissed out of hand because we just want to be right (or not feel as dumb or intellectually lazy as we are these days).
Global warming is real. And to naively think there's a free lunch with Nature, that somehow we can treat it as a free-for-all trashcan, reflect a level of naive, brain-washed, talk-radioed junk (guy's version of gossiping) facts that stand in for "common sense" and science these days.
Science is about inferring probabilities, and they are rising. Rather than be a fatalist with this stuff, it's just simple insurance that we invest to go green, basically learn how to do more with less. Instead, with put up with low expectations of this do-nothing, intellectually bankrupt administration, where scientists are respected as much as the drunken Joe on the street. Pathetic.
It's no surprise I guess. Americans now have a dollar drops 50% against the euro and *Canadian* dollar, have literally 0% savings rate, and can't balance their checkbook or mortgages. So of course global warming is nice.
Oh and managed to elect W for president. I mean is that the *best* man for the job or folks just thought it was a ceremonial post which just needed a nice party guy folks rather have drinks with?
people dismiss the end of the world claims is because we don't hear
it from *trusted* sources. I find CNET entertaining to read and I
keep up with it but I would never cite it in a serious paper.
I have not been able to find a scientific report which I've been happy
with. I want to read all of the numbers. What is the confidence
interval for the study? Are the numbers actually statistically
significant?
I need answers for these and I haven't been able to find answers.
So global warming is categorized in my mind just a little above
conspiracies similar to the moon landing hoax.
So here is my question, where do I go to read actual scientific
reports and not somebody's interpretation of one?
Who do we see claiming humans are causing global warming? The same bunch we see headed to Bali in private jets, burning extra oil so they can claim that we are causing global warming by burning petro in our cars? Real credible.
How many alleged scientist were at the IPCC? 2000?
19,000 disagree. Speaking of the IPCC, here's another article that contributes part the research of another paper to a member of the panel itself. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316566,00.html
As far as "W" goes, at least he hasn't allowed us to sign on to that idiotic Kyoto treaty and apparently, we are not going to sign on to the next idiotic treaty either. At least he got that right.
exchange rate with global warming, American spending and the
election of someone you politically disagree with? All this while
maintaining your moral AND intellectual superiority?
Mr. Numb, can I introduce you to Mr. Skull?
But let's conveniently avoid the fundamental question: What makes us think we can treat Nature as a free trash can? What else is free in life?
Is it disputed, for example, that we can cause great harm in a short period of time? For example, in 40 years, we've managed to poison every fish on the planet with mercury and heavy metals, a fundamental foodstock required for our long-term survival, with manifold consequences it has for the food chain, not to mention our mental health? Is such fish poisoning all natural?
Those pesky scientists dub fish's Omega-3s as *essential* fatty acids (EFAs), cuz their the building blocks for our brain; half our brain weight is made up omega 3s. And not surprisingly, of the 8 industrialized nations, Americans eat the least. And we report the highest per-capita incidents of ADHD for kids under 12. More of our kids are drugged, hands down. Not to mention anger issues, depression, inability to think. Can we substitute fish with a man-made drug instead?
We're solely responsible for that mess. And there were trolls we defended industry on that one too, not to mention DDT and a whole host of baloney.
Wrt scientific data, there's plenty. The most recent major studies are:
Britain's Stern Report by the Blair government, now a policy directive of current UK PM Gordon Brown:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096084.stm
UN's IPCC report:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change
Contributors
People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 850 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors (according to a Flash animation at the IPCC's website).
Of these, the contributors to the Working Group 1 report (including the summary for policy makers) included 600 authors from 40 countries, over 620 expert reviewers, a large number of government reviewers, and representatives from 113 governments [6].
Working Group I dealt with the "Physical Science Basis of Climate Change." The Working Group I Summary for Policymakers (SPM) was published on 2 February 2007[12] and revised on 5 February 2007[13]. There was also a 2 February 2007 press release[14]. The full WGI report[15] was published in March. The key conclusions of the SPM were that[16]:
* Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
* Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
* Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century (pages 13 and 18)[13].
* The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
* World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and that:
o Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in) [table 3].
o There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall.
o There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.
* Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium.
* Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years
In IPCC statements "most" means greater than 50%, "likely" means at least a 66% likelihood, and "very likely" means at least a 90% likelihood.
An outline of chapters in the WGI report (as of November 3, 2005)[17] and a list of the report's authors (as of March 10, 2005)[18] were made available before publication of the SPM.
Really? Mr. Shankland, what rock are you living under? Do you read anything that isn't left-wing propaganda? More scientists are speaking out against the politically driven, poor science of human caused global warming. Can you not see that the UN, corrupt as it is, just wants more money, more power? Did you hear the crap that came from their most recent meeting in Bali? Wake up, sir.
Yeh, if the UN says it.....well it could be true if fantasy world just changed a little.
2050. That was 2-3 years ago. Why have sea levels not increased
one iota? Could it be that Big Al is a hoax? I'm really sick of all of
this hypothesizing on an non-existent idea, man made global-
warming. Get a grip! That's the most egotistical theory in the
world.
Scientists always get it wrong. Dinosaurs Walk. No wait, we found Dino tracks that show they could run.
The Northwest passage is Free of ice as never before. Oh wait, Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian sailor did it in 1905. And a supply ship, the St Roch did it in 1944. Maybe it's been ice free before after all.
And what about the ANTARCTIC? It's so cold that if it warms up, the ice precipitation INCREASES there, possibly offsetting the losses in the arctic.
It cracks me up the these political scientists that mix politics with thier science are willing to scare people into spending money they don't have to, so that what? those same scientist can GET MORE GRANT MONEY.
Wake up people, this is all a scam. Just like the "oil crissis" the "war on terror" and everything else those hardcore people on the extream edges of any debate would like you to believe.
Thank goodness most sane americans will just shrug thier shoulder and continue buying SUVs and spending money. Our economy would be a WRECK if these scare mongering politicians and scientists actually scared anyone.
and by the way, outside your little world where science doesn't exist and everything runs on magic, the economy is a wreck. Nobody outside the US wants dollars anymore, but that shouldn't be too surprising, as they have been buying less stuff than we have been importing for many years.
Volcanic and large meteorite impacts put up a lot of particles of earth and gases into the air that block out sunlight for decades. Is the answer to global warming a major earth shattering string of volcanic eruptions? We don't know but the theories for ice ages suggest that is the case.
We certainly don't want an ice age but a cooling of the planet by a few degrees would be ideal.
By the way, where is all the water going from all of these melting glaciers? N.Y. and Sydney are still at see level and not under.
Break the Wedge!
www.breakthewedge.com
Take the word theory. Many folks have a crude understanding of that means. Theories are the basis of our technology and humanity. Our whole world is built on it today. Take computers for example. It relies on atomic theory. We can't see electrons and their subatomic interactions, but lo and behold, it works. It took a lot of experimentation and supporting theories to arrive at.
Climate change is also a theory, with a set of associated probabilities. Most of the data to-date show a disproportionate correlation with our CO2 emissions and warmer weather. Note the word disproportionate. In this case, it means:
Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years.
It means we're pretty sure that the CO2, method and NO2 go somewhere and do something, and we scientists think it has something to do with the extreme warming of the earth. When water temp rises 2 degrees, it's easy for one to forget that we're talking about the heating up of trillions of tons of water.
And for us to assume that we just have to invent more technology to balance out another technology isn't smart. We can just learn to do more with less, and not waste; not sure when wasting became popular but it's really an empty gesture. At the end of day, I'm not sure what concrete value a big-honking gas guzzling SUV gets you, except to compensate for a short you know what.
Take fish again for instance. We poison the fish with mercury and heavy metals. Oops. Then we use distillation technology to clean the fish so we can eat the fish oil products turns out to strip out a lot of useful phospholipids. Oops. So we have to eat fatty meals with the fish oil so it works like regular fish.
Who ends up winning, other than the companies involved with those industries? Are we better off, or just back to where we started, in which case, it seems to just make more sense to just try to keep the oceans clean to begin with. Do we have to pollute the ocean? Did we have to use slaves? Are we really only suppose to use oil and not solar power and wind as the Europeans have to power 20% of their electricity needs? Do we really have to do the same ol' same ol' because we're comfortable being a brain-dead, complacent society because we've had it so good for so long (relatively speaking, we're only a couple hundred years old as a country; Einstein just discovered relativity and JJ Thomson electrons, pre-electricity, 100 years ago, and we just mastered electrons less than 50 years ago so we're just a tiny insignificant blip, with a huge ego no doubt, but nonetheless a historical blip that Nature can do fine without).
Point is, for folks that don't have ADD and managed to read and comprehend the above, is that by thinking more "green", we could save ourselves a lot of money, problems, and do more with less in the long-run, plus add more higher paying jobs to boot. Otherwise, we just end up yelling and screaming at each other in the most gigantic Titanic sinkage of our collective lives.
I suppose that depends on your prospective, the percentage isn't near as dire as you imply. Further, you "scientists" are not transparent as to how you come to that conclusion. Show me the data/math. You also speak of "a set of associated probabilities". How are we, (mere laymen) suppose to believe your "probabilities" when the modeling can't even reproduce past events. I'll go slow for the "ADD" people. Using the methods and modeling "scientists" use to predict our future climate, our past climate can't be reproduced. This should be a real problem for you. You also speak of a rise of 2 degrees of water temp. Hasn't this happened before? Why is it, that my electric-generating coal plant is the cause when it didn't cause it before? How in the world do you equate movement of a metal to an apocalypse? And lol at your European remark. Germany is firing up new coal plants as we speak. France has gone nuclear. I see nothing wrong with either. Solar power and wind are fine. I'm all for it, however, as I'm sure you know, because your are a "scientist" (and those guys are really smart!!!!), that WE CAN'T STORE AC POWER!!!!! Think about it for a second.
Hypocritical and two-sided at best. On one-hand, religion is held "on faith", no positive proof or track-record to show, yet it's allowed to direct the path of billions of people based on conjecture (by definition, since religion is as concrete and provable as invisible pasta balls). But the point being is, there are few things in life, other than religion and politics, that are so black and white, with clearly established cause and effect.
What you can hold accountable, however, is that in the next 5-10 years, these scientists predict, based on the best available science, that a certain set of very measurable, correlated things will happen. And over time, these correlations and data points extrapolate to higher confidence predictions that either will confirm or disprove itself. It's a matter of how much insurance we're willing to ante up. And so far, we're playing worse than Vegas rules; that is, no insurance, let's just put it all in, pollute away baby, some god said that the earth is meant to recycle our man-made heavy-metal, synthetic crap, like a rich drunk on crack.
While people who claim it's all natural offer no predictions whatsoever and essentially resort to a fatalist position that whatever happens happens, and is besides outside our control, "god willing".
It seems these days just Americans are so black and white. Omg, Europeans are firing up coal plants. Of course they are, it's pragmatic short-run solution. The more pertinent reality is that they are also steadily increasing their ratio of green-sourced energy for the medium and long-term. And when Toyota invested in hybrids a decade ago, it was ridiculed and still is in some circles.
But what do critics and naysayers have to offer as an alternative other than a do-nothing status quo? Why are we not curious about testing out alternative approaches? That's suppose to be progress. But instead, we have folks that take technology for granted but would like it all for free, without investment or sacrifice, other than ones made by America's WWII-era scientists, all presuming we can trash the planet, basically a new-fangled modern American right alongside easy money and Web 2.0 riches, the Ultimate Free Lunch.
As said, this flawed mentality shows with all our "free" money via massively chronic credit abuse, zero savings and tremendous debt, disrespect for science investment and education, and a lack of basic critical thinking. Along that vein, subprime mortgages by less educated lower income folks is more understandable than tax cut rhetoric stimulating the economy by giving most of the tax money back to the rich, who don't need it and reinvest it overseas for better return, and ironically since the Fed is in $1 trillion debt, uses interest-laden borrowed money from China, bleeding the treasury bone-dry for us and our kids and their kids' kids.
So my fundamental rebuttal is that if we could spend 1 trillion of today's real and borrowed dollars to attack Iraq based on imaginary nukes, we can certainly a little something something of that amount to invest in more science to understand and really figure out more conclusively if CO2 *is* the cause rather than just rely on hope and already-decided ideological dogma, presuming that it ain't a problem because we don't have enough data, while cutting funding needed to get more data, fulfilling a nasty self-serving ideological, not scientific, agenda.
This agenda tries to mold the future to what should be, vs. whatever reality unveils through science and all available facts. Something of which we'll be able to use to match up predictions with actual events so we can all make up our minds fully informed sans dogma. But wait until 100% certainty? Come on, get real and grow up to real world and life.
how stupid people are? I'm just going to use cars as a quick example...Image 2 billion cars, all sucking in oxygen to drive combustion and it is spewing out the byproducts of the engine. Now is that natural? No it's not. It's man made and we're not thinking about consequences of the things we take for granted.
- Look at Mars/ Why I believe this is a Scam
- by JohnFree December 15, 2007 6:14 PM PST
- I am 60 years old. I have 8 Grandchildren and I have a Masters Degree.
- Reply to this comment
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- Yeh,
- by suyts December 16, 2007 6:28 AM PST
- but they won't believe it. Venus is warmer also. They'll prob. tell you it is a Bush/Big oil conspiracy.
- View reply
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- With respect...
- by Speiler9 December 16, 2007 10:56 AM PST
- Global Climate Change as a "SOCIALIST MECHANIZATION"
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(58 Comments)I received a telescope for Christmas in 1960 when I was 13. I vividly remember viewing the polar ice caps on mars, and was amazed at their size. They were so large as to almost cover a third of the planet's surface.
Today I have a much larger scope (Dobsonian 18 inch) and when I look at Mars...the polar ice caps are almost completely gone.
No...I DO NOT BELIEVE IN MAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING....too many REAL scientists are crying foul....so follow the money.
Carbon Dioxide comprises one third of one percent of our atmosphere....there is NO WAY that CO2 is an issue....
Global Warming is a SOCIALIST mechanization intended to exploit and control.
What we are seeing is a natural and wholly un-anthropomorphic event...the earth and the sun interact in cycles...and THERE IS NOTHING MANKIND CAN DO TO CHANGE THAT!!!
Serious and critically honest people can do a google and find plenty of evidence of the truth.
(whatever that is) I think you are quite deranged. Serious and
critically honest people can indeed do a Google, and find that
the arguments you are proposing here are not supported by any
evidence. CO2 is not the only issue, but it is conservatively
estimated to be responsible in combination with other
'greenhouse' gases for at least 50% of recent atmospheric
warming, even by those scientists proposing that solar activity
input has been underestimated. You, and you alone, claim that
CO2 is absolutely not a factor. I challenge you to find one single
piece of research that supports this position.