Global Warming
gregladen | July 8, 2015A new paper has just been published. This paper is going to cause an uproar in the science denialist community. Mud will be thrown. Tin hats will be donned. Somebody better check the oil pressure.
Conspiracies everywhere
I see conspiracies everywhere. It's true.
Look at any internet site that talks about health, disease, diet, or anything related. Some of those sites will be legit science based sites. The majority will be sites feeding you woo. The anti-Vaxers, the anti-Milkers, the Homeopaths, man of the "natural food" sites. Now look more closely at those sites to find out what they…
gregladen | July 7, 2015Focusing on Earth, but also a few tidbits on wind, fire, and ice, some current news and observations about global warming.
Earth
As humans release greenhouse gas pollutants (mainly CO2) into the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth, and the top 2000 meters of the ocean, heat up. But some of the CO2 is absorbed into plant tissues and soil, as well as in the ocean or other standing water. Historically, about 30% of the extra CO2 is absorbed into the ocean, and another 30% converted into (mainly) plant tissue. We hope that enough CO2 is absorbed that the effects of greenhouse gas pollution is…
gregladen | July 1, 2015Humans have been releasing greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere for a long time now, and this has heated up the surface of the planet. This, in turn, has caused a number of alarming changes in weather. Several current weather events exemplify the effects of climate change.
Record High Temperatures Being Shattered
South Asia recently experienced a number of killer heatwaves, and that is still going on in the region. More recently, we've seen long standing record highs being broken in the American West. The Capital Climate group recently tweeted this list of records:
Hot Whopper…
gregladen | July 1, 2015I want to quickly mention two interesting items that crossed my desk. First is a study in Nature that looks at changes in extreme weather patterns between 1979 and very recently, the other is a study of how media has been addressing climate science denial among presidential candidates.
Evidence that global warming is intensifying extreme weather
First, the changes in weather. Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has resulted in important changes in key factors that affect the weather. The simplest (but not complete) explanation is probably this. Overall patterns of air circulation (…
gregladen | June 23, 2015See below for update.
Andrew Revkin has a new kind of fan. These are fans that agree with much of what Revkin says, or at least feel comfortable in his community of commenters. These fans feel their views are substantiated by what they read in Revkin's New York Times column, Dot Earth. They seem to be Libertarian, anti-environment, anti-science, pro-fossil fuel, and frankly, anti-green. Not just one or two of Andrew Revkin's fans, but a bunch -- with numbers possibly growing -- are of this mind, and this is very disturbing. If we had the technology to transport these fans back in time and…
gregladen | June 18, 2015Michael Mann was interviewed by Michael Smerconish about the Pope's recent letter on climate change:
Here's the NYT piece by Justin Gillis mentioned by Mann.
The graphic at the top is form here.
gregladen | June 18, 2015NOAA has released the data for average global surface temperature for the month of May. The number is 0.87 degrees C (1.57 degrees F) above the 20th century average for their data set. This is the highest value seen for the month of May since 1880, which is the earliest year in the database. The previous record value for may was last year. This year's May value is 0.08 degrees C (0.14 degrees F) higher than that.
According to NOAA:
The May globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.30°F (1.28°C) above the 20th century average. This tied with 2012 as the highest for May in the 1880–…
gregladen | June 15, 2015This is a press release from the Center for Inquiry:
Skeptics Dare Heartland Institute to Take Up $25,000 Climate Challenge
A leading science advocacy group is throwing down the gauntlet to the Heartland Institute, a group that claims that global warming stopped in 1998, with a stark, simple challenge: If the 30-year average global land surface temperature goes up in 2015, setting a new record, the Heartland Institute must donate $25,000 to a science education nonprofit.
The challenge is presented by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), a program of the Center for Inquiry, which held…
gregladen | June 15, 2015Human released greenhouse gas pollution continues to warm the surface of the planet. May was thought to be likely a very very warm month but it turns out to be merely very warm (only one "very") according to data released this morning.
Shockingly, May turned out to be, in the NASA GISS data set, less warm than expected. (I mainly get my cues for what to expect from my friend and colleague John Abraham, who has written up the May NASA GISS results HERE.) At the same time the May data came out (earlier today) the data for April was adjusted by NASA (these adjustments happen all the time,…
gregladen | June 7, 2015The Problem with terminology
There is some confusion about the way we talk about global warming. Most of this confusion arises during the communication of science to the public or to policy makers. Part of this confusion rests within the science itself; There is no meaningful confusion about the nature of global warming or how it is observed, but there are some terminological glitches of the kind that arise in science all the time, and that rarely matter to the science itself.
The most commonly used indicator of global warming is a graph that is meant to show the effects of global warming…
gregladen | June 4, 2015There is no such thing as a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming.
There is, however, variation as the earth's surface temperature steadily rises as the result of the human release of greenhouse gas pollution. Every now and then that variation results in a period of several years when the rise in global temperature is relatively slow, and a recent such period has been termed a "hiatus" or "pause." But that signifier mainly comes from those who deny the reality of global warming, and is often used by them as an argument that global warming is somehow not real. It is real, and they are wrong…
gregladen | June 3, 2015Joe and Mary built a house.
They built it on an old flood plain of a small river, though there'd not been a flood in years. This was a 500-year flood plain. Not a very floody flood plain at all.
The local zoning code required that for a new house at their location the bottom of the basement needed to be above a certain elevation, with fill brought in around the house to raise the surrounding landscape. But Joe's uncle was on the zoning board, and it wasn't that hard to get a variance. This saved them thousands of dollars, and they built the house without the raised foundation or the fill.…
gregladen | June 2, 2015Recently, a paper published in a Chinese journal of science by Monckton, Soon and Legates attracted a small amount of attention by claiming that climate science models "run hot" and therefore overrepresent the level of global warming caused by human greenhouse gas pollution. The way they approached the problem of climate change was odd. The Earth's climate system is incredibly complex, and climate models used by mainstream climate scientists address this complexity and therefore are also complex. Monckton et al chose to address this complexity by developing a model they characterize as "…
gregladen | May 26, 2015The Earth is warming because of what humans have been doing to the atmosphere. Global Warming has a lot of effects many of which we've discussed here, but the most obvious one is, well, it gets warmer. At present, India is experiencing record breaking heat and people are dying.
It is very difficult to say how many people die from the heat in any region. We can use a standard approach used by epidemiologists to estimate this number. This involves simply looking at mortality rates as they change over time to try to detect a signal, an increase, associated with the variable in question. If…
gregladen | May 26, 2015The surface ice in the Arctic has been melting to historic low levels every year for the last several years. The graph above shows the first ten years in the National Snow & Ice Data Center records, meant to indicate what Arctic Sea Ice "normally" does as it melts off during the northern warm months. The thick black line is the average over 1981-2010, and grey shaded area shows two standard deviations above and below that line. The blue line tracking along the lower end of the 2SD shaded area is the ice extent this year. During the period when sea ice is at its maximum, this year's ice…
gregladen | May 22, 2015Human released greenhouse gas pollution changes the climatic system through a variety of mechanisms. Trade winds and jet streams change their patterns of movement, and the distribution of moisture in the air changes, with precipitation either lacking more than usual or being more abundant than usual. The patterns of movement of major air masses and the increased bifurcation of air masses into more wet than usual and more dry than usual can result in long periods where region experiences excess precipitation or a lack of precipitation. When the latter happens, there can be a drought.…
gregladen | May 21, 2015A large portion of the glacial mass in Antarctic, previously thought to be relatively stable, is now understood to be destablizing. This is new research just out in Science. The abstract is pretty clear:
Growing evidence has demonstrated the importance of ice shelf buttressing on the inland grounded ice, especially if it is resting on bedrock below sea level. Much of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula satisfies this condition and also possesses a bed slope that deepens inland. Such ice sheet geometry is potentially unstable. We use satellite altimetry and gravity observations to show that a…
gregladen | May 21, 2015A new paper is just out in The Lancet that examines the mortality risk of high and low ambient temperatures. The basic idea is that if it is either to hot or too cold, mortality may increase, possibly with the weather being a factor to augment the effects of other health problems, or as a direct result. The paper is methodologically reasonably well done but leads to conclusions that I think will be misinterpreted and misused. The paper implies that a shift to a warmer world would have lower mortality effects than a shift to a colder world might. Or, more significantly, that a shift to a…
gregladen | May 21, 2015It is a fiction that the right wing, and the Republican party, and their primary philosophical guru (Rush Limbaugh) and mouthpiece (FOX News) are more American, more security-savvy, and more patriotic than Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats. This fiction is part of a common bully tactic you already know about because you were either bothered by the bullies, or you were a bully, in middle school. The bully takes his nefarious trait and projects it on his victim. And now, we see yet another piece of evidence for this, one among many. FOX News has attacked President Obama for his…
gregladen | May 20, 2015The White House has issued a press release noting that President Obama will address climate change as a national security threat in a speech later today in Connecticut. Here is the press release.
White House Report: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate
Today, President Obama will travel to New London, Connecticut to deliver the commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy. During his speech, the President will speak to the importance of acting on climate change and the risks to national security this global threat poses. The White House also released a…