Climate Science

This TED talk (remixed) says that if we get to 4 or 5 degrees, natural feedbacks (like the 'methane bomb') could take us to 12. At that point, this popular Grist writer summarises climate science as predicting half the planet would be uninhabitable. Is this really what climate science is saying? Could the methane feedbacks take us from 4 or 5 degrees to 12 and then dump our great grandchildren with half the planet being uninhabitable? www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8 Read more: http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/499/talk-says-degrees-planet-evacuated#ixzz3GYu0JMIb

It appears as if 2010 is going to be the warmest year since temperature records began 130 years ago. NASA, NOAA and the British Metrology office seem to be predicting this according to this recent article/blog post in the New York Times. http://green.blogs.n...=nytimesscience At this current point in time, it looks as if it's becoming increasingly obvious that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

Hey there In my country and region (Nicaragua, Central America) winter hasnt come this year. It is off by three months. This hasn't happened in almost forty years. Where can I find information about this topic? I am interested in a discussion or publication by serious academics who try to explain what has happened so far this year, and a pronostic for the remaining of the year. Maybe a US forum/institution talking about this topic? Unfortunately, politics in my region are corrupt, and official professionals are usually just average joes leading quizzical institutions. Thanks for your help

This isn't about AGW, but is about how we describe climate. When discussing the difference between climate and weather we usually look at the longer term trends, typically 30 years. I've been considering this and wondering if this is really such a good idea. I'm lousy with graphs so I hope I can paint a good enough word picture to illustrate my thoughts. Imagine a world where the climate (Global Average Temperature) changed in a monotonic fashion, but still cycled. For 30 years it goes up by .01 degrees per year and for the next 30 it went down by .01 degrees per year. Same amount, no deviation, year in and year out. This would give a distinct sawtooth pattern…

This is a pretty solid talk, and the speaker is good (which helps). Does the plan presented suffer from any fatal gaps or flaws? Do you think there are better approaches? Is it feasible? Do we have a choice?

There will, of course, be people who blatantly lie or who simply don't understand the facts on this issue. There are also people who have had their critical thinking skills extinguished with campaigns of ignorance and ideology, but illustrations like the one in the video below help paint the picture in stark and indisputable terms that ought to be accessible to even most ignorant or blind among us. It's both beautiful an sad. What do you think? Also, do you know of any other similar illustrations that help to demonstrate the issue plainly and with clarity?

Below is a link to a very recent article in The Australian, below that is a paragraph from the article by Professor Richard Tol. Is the 97% Consensus on Man-Made Global Warming Correct?, what are the real figures? http://m.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/global-warming-consensus-claim-doesnt-stand-up/story-e6frg6zo-1227276959248 The Cook paper is remarkable for its quality, though. Cook and colleagues studied 12,000 papers, but did not check whether their sample is representative for the scientific literature. It isnt. Their conclusions are about the papers they happened to look at, rather than about the literature. Attempts to replicate their sample failed: a …

Matt Ridley, author of "The Rational Optimist" gave the Angus Millar Lecture at the RSA recently, describing himself as a climate "Heretic". His speech is about the best overview of the sceptical position I've seen and judging from the comments at the blogs "at least 97%" of the sceptics would agree with me on this. He has allowed a couple of blogs to post the full text of his speech and it's really worth the read. (Unless of course a person is certain that the other side is composed only of pseudoscience and liars and would rather not face evidence to the contrary) The link is to Anthony Watts site simply because this version has some of the explanatory graphs t…

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-landscape-unseen-years.html Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that haven't been ice-free in more than 40,000 years and the region may be experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds. The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, uses radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of plants collected at the edges of 30 ice caps on Baffin Island, west of Greenland. The island has experienced significant summertime warming in recent decades. "The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, s…

-- When there is cold weather as in winter, does the atmospheric pressure 'shifts' to a higher range than in hot summer for the same clear sky ? It would make sense, as there is denser atmosphere when cold. -- When the weather reports say as example 'northwest wind' ... do they mean coming from northwest or heading towards northwest? Is there a standard meaning ?

The proposal in this video makes sense. Do you agree? Would you sign on? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efAUCG9oTb8

Hello. I'm a writer working on the second draft of my novel, and need to bounce some of the science off people who are more science-minded than I. The basic plot device that I need to develop/debunk in my story is that atmospheric methane is at flammable levels (i.e. just over 5%). To keep this open-ended, what effects do you predict this would have near the planet's surface, and consequently, what consequences would there be for life on the planet? Of course there would be increased temperatures and the like, but I need a more well-rounded view of what would happen so I can measure the plausibility of this plot device. Thanks in advance.

I would like to do some primary research on air pollution and do not know where to start. Can anyone suggest any experiments, ideas etc. thanks for your help:-)

Hi guys, I’m a script writer and I have a situation that I’d like help with. In the story, I have a location that used to have connecting roads but there was some kind of flood. I want the flood to have lasted years and years, and to now be residing, so someone could take a Jeep on the roads and manage to drive through them, despite the water being about a foot high. I am trying to explain how the flood happened, what kind of area it could happen, and how a smart character was able to figure out that the roads would be drivable in his Jeep again. I’m also trying to figure out how a flood could last years and years.. or even turn a land into marshlands. …

The heat of the burning wood comes from solar energy. So trees store solar energy by removing it from environment. The absence of trees causes a greater dispersion of solar energy in the environment causing an increase in temperature(Global Warming regardless of CO2). All the wood mass we see is related to the solar energy stored by the trees for many years. (I haven't considered the fruits of the trees etc, which in a year decompose and release solar energy and CO2 again) About it 1-Can there be a relationship between glaciations-forest decrease and forest increase-ice retreat(Glaciations cycles. Regardless of…

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100128/full/news.2010.42.html Another article showing that human caused global warming is a myth. But what are the chances this never makes the headlines.

Some people like to think that we sceptics simply ignore evidence, or perhaps for spurious reasons we discount it. When we've read the same thing over and over again and it never happens then funnily enough we view that a sane person does and should discount the stories. One of those stories is the whole "The ice caps are melting! We could all drown!" Well, yes we "could", we could also freeze in a sudden ice age or be killed off by a meteorite strike. Lots of things "could" happen. To argue against this point it would seem reasonable to point out that scientists in general are a cautious lot and so use the word "could". Followed shortly by an assertion that if th…

Most climate scientists claim that elevated CO2 levels will be devastating to Earth's ecosystems. However when CO2 levels were highest some of the largest terrestrial organisms were alive, such as dinosaurs, giant turtles, etc. There must have been an abundance of caloric resources in order for such large organisms to sustain themselves. How can we claim that elevated CO2 levels and higher temperatures will lead to the collapse of ecosystems, when under those very conditions the most demanding organisms in terms of caloric requirements were able to thrive? Based on historical evidence it seems like ecosystems would be more vibrant when CO2 levels and temperatures are high…

One of the predictions of GW is that the polar ice caps will melt and cause sea levels to rise. Have they been rising?

A recently released study in Science shows that the Arctic is the warmest it's been in 2000+ years. Please note that the data only goes back that far, not that temperatures were just as warm back then. Link to the actual article, PM me if you want the full article.

The attribution of various radiative forcings to overall changes in the global mean surface temperature is the meat of the debate in regard to climate change. A new study has recently posted their findings: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038932.shtml Here are their plots for the attribution of climate change: I know in the past many have asked for a more updated plot than the one I usually use: So there you go, plots from a more recent modeling effort.

The BBC has announced that it will revert to using the UK government Met Office as the data source of all its weather forecasting and climate update services. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm4z8mple3o The BBC had previously terminated a near century old relationship with the Met Office eight years ago in 2017 in favour of a Dutch provider called the MeteoGroup citing a need to obtain “best value for license payers money”. The MeteoGroup was subsequently taken over by a private American firm called DTN based in Minnesota. In October 2024 a technical fault affecting the supplying of data to the United Kingdom's BBC Weather service caused the latter's website and app …

Hello all, I live in Netherland, Europe. I dive a hybrid car and I have 3.2 kWp of solar panels on my roof. I do not use natural gas for heating but an air/air heatpump with a COP of 5.0. So yes, I do believe in climate change and that it is (at least partially) caused by human activity. At a party I met some one who called himself a climate skeptic, he did believe that climate change was a fact but not that it was significantly influenced by mankind. He challenged me to calculate what effect (increase in temperature) a doubling of CO2 would have on the climate. And that is what I did, or at least tried to do, a few days later. And to my surprise it was very little, m…

https://apnews.com/article/science-glaciers-antarctica-e9687077d7295e8218ba7cbcb9246ca3 A team of scientists is sailing to “the place in the world that’s the hardest to get to” so they can better figure out how much and how fast seas will rise because of global warming eating away at Antarctica’s ice. Thirty-two scientists on Thursday are starting a more than two-month mission aboard an American research ship to investigate the crucial area where the massive but melting Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea and may eventually lose large amounts of ice because of warm water. The Florida-sized glacier has gotten the nickname the “doomsday glacier” because…

I read an interesting post on why some people may be climate science skeptics. Climate science skeptics will cite record temperatures in the dust bowl and stuff, right? Well, there is something to that, but those extremes hide gradual change. This guy analyzed data for his home state (Kentucky, home of the Famous Mitch McConnel) and found some interesting trends in the data there. High temperatures are declining slightly. Low temperatures are increasing more. But these trends don't tend to set records. So all the records stand. So, yes, the climate is changing, and yes, it was hotter in the dust bowl. It's not simple. http://www.vofoundation.org/blog/swelte…