You know about Albedo. No not Libido, Albedo. Sunlight is to varying degrees reflected off the surface of the earth more or less back into space. That is Albedo. The vast regions of snow and ice covered glacial surfaces in the northern and southern Polar regions contributes to a good amount of the Earth’s Albedo. In the north, the biggest chunk of that is the ice-covered subcontinent of Greenland.
Over the last several years, Greenland’s Albedo has diminished. This was in part predicted by scientists who expected that warmer conditions would change the nature of ice and snow crystals on the glacier’s surface, thus darkening it and causing less reflection. But the rate of Albedo reduction in Greenland has been much more rapid than expected.
Click the scary graph to see more posts on climate change.
This could be because of increased deposition of soot from wildfires and possibly increased dust from aridification, both caused in large part by global warming. This means that global warming could be causing more global warming, and more importantly, that it could be causing it at a higher rate than previously expected.
There is a research project afoot that will look into this, but that is having a hard time getting funded, probably for bad reasons. The project is now asking for crowdsourcing funds. Please have a look at the following video, learn some interesting stuff, get scared, then click the link below the video to donate money to the project, then feel better. But not too much better.
Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed:
Kathleen Dean Moore at Nobel Conference 48 on the greatest violation of human rights ever seen:
With all due respect to the introducers, the talk actually starts at 8 minutes. Also, the best line delivered in any talk this year starts just after 42 minutes and 50 seconds (but really, start at 40:40 for best effect). It would be interesting to hear comments about the religious vs. secular approaches both suggested by Moore.
This is the time of year when we list the “top ten” stories or events of the year. That we do this in late December is not totally arbitrary. A year, unfortunately (given it’s odd number of days and uncomfortable near-synchronization with lunar cycles), is not arbitrary, but rather, imposed on us by the realities of orbital geometry. That we often list the top, best, worst, funniest, most important, or whatever “ten” items is of course arbitrary. Had tetrapods evolved differently so that humans had 9 fingers on each hand, perhaps we’d be listing 18 items. Or if the development of numbers and counting gone a different way, we’d be listing things in units on base 28 (number of days in a lunar cycle).
The good news is that journalism, I think under the influence of the blogosphere and other entities on the World Wide Web, have mostly given up on the “list of ten” idea. Most, nearly all, of the lists I’ve seen have been some other number, including 18, 6, and 1+9 (that was Science magazine, which identified the discovery of the Higgs Boson as number one, and produced a separate article with the “runners up” rather uncomfortably including 9 items, but nowhere do they ennumerate even though the total is 10). So, the “tens” fetish, perhaps, is passé, or at least, not in style for the moment.
There is a problem with this years’ crop of science related “top ten” (using “ten” here as a meaningless icon referring to the days when everything at the annual scale happened in tens). As you know, a group of us recently produced a list of “top climate related stories” for 2012, and there were 18+1 (18 climate stories, and one political one added to remind people that there is a political side to this debate, not because there was only one political event). That blog post, Top Climate Stories of 2012, has resulted in considerable hate and vitriol from those who still pretend to think that Anthropogenic Global Warming and other human-caused climate change is not real. You don’t see most of the vitriol, which comes to me in the form of a few comments per hour around the clock, because I don’t allow anti-science tirades, link farms to denialist sites, threats, or unnecessary profanity not by me in the comments section except occasionally to show how stupid it is.
But that is not the point I want to make. The point I want to make is that our list of 18 climate related things includes many, more than ten, that are individually among the most important science related events, stories, or findings of the year. But, Main Stream Media outlets and science journals like Nature and Science have mostly made the decision to 1) Put Higgs first no matter what; and 2) Include all of the climate related stories in one or two items on their lists.
I have no problem with the discovery of the Higgs Boson being first, as long as we assume it has actually been discovered, and not just probably discovered with more to come. It is very important because whether or not the Higgs exists, and certain details about what it “looks” like, have to do with the fundamental nature of reality. That’s got to be important. And, I’d guess that there were years in the early days of accelerator-based research, during the early days of “atom smashing” that multiple important discoveries that occurred in one year got lumped into one item on the “List of Ten.”
But I do have a problem with most of the important climate related events being mushed into one or two mentions. This is because 2012 is the year that the chickens came home to roost, or at least, started to show up in uncomfortably large numbers. There is no reasonable, normal, well intentioned person alive who could look at the events of 2012 (including perhaps a few from 2011) in the context of climate change predictions and models, and years of careful observation, and not be very alarmed and very concerned. Those who remain in the denialist camp are bad people, or badly deluded. Being misinformed is no longer an excuse, working for Big Oil is not longer an excuse, preferring to live in a state of denial is no longer an excuse.
Climate related events are numbers 2 through more than ten, if we give Higgs the top spot. The major outlets are doing us a disservice and exhibiting their usual, rather tenacious hold on quaint concepts of symmetry or balance, or some numerological bent, which makes them look silly.
Having said that, and having produced our own list of (18 or so) climate related events, there are of course other things to remember. Ancient DNA has made a strong forward play with new information about Neanderthals and their supposed contemporaries. I’m sure the current view, which makes reference to the Denisovans, is naive and very much subject to revision. We don’t know enough yet. I hope we don’t hold the Denisovan concept as too central, important, immovable, or not changeable. As more ancient samples are identified and studied, the Denisovans will be joined by many others. They might even become unimportant. The key story here is not the end product of important research that gave us important results; rather, it is a breakthrough into a new era of accumulating information about human populations prior to the takeover of the planet by a smaller subset of them, with whom they sometimes had sex.
Other DNA related news is important. Mainly genetic technology is coming of age. Expect the term “GMO” (genetically modified organism) to no longer mean something as simple as obnoxious corn owned by an obnoxious company, or a tomato plant that can grow in icky soil. In the not too distant future, GMO’s will be things you have in your house, in your pocket, on your roof, in your vehicle … maybe even as your vehicle. Nanotechnology move over. This is the new nanotechnology. In a few years we may look back at 2012 as a turning point.
The landing of a brand new and highly sophisticated robot on Mars was very important and very cool and deserves to be on any list. But, the real story from NASA’s Mars mission will come over the next year or so as that Robot starts to find stuff … or even, fails to find stuff … and the results are analyzed. I hope the spectacular landing and related events don’t become the story of Mars exploration. I hope the story is still in the future, with piles of amazing data and spectacular results.
And lets not forget the other top tens, the non science events. This will be seen as the year that the Republican Party started its shut down and those enraged that we have a non-white president are fully marginalized. This year was the high water mark of the Anti-Gay movement. This is the year something that will some day be transformed into Universal Health Care in the US (and Health Care as a right) happened (I refer here to the verification of Obamacare as constitutional). This will be the year that the gun debate turned against the gun nuts.
Of course, those things will require some more hard work in 2013, and won’t mean much if we go extinct because we have totally broken the planet. Climate change is still numbers one through some large number. Don’t forget that.
Top “Ten” Recent Books (focusing on 2012 but including the last few years) on Climate, Science denialism, Energy, and Science Policy are (including one Post Warming novel) are:
A group of us, all interested in climate science, put together a list of the most notable, often, most worrying, climate-related stories of the year, along with a few links that will allow you to explore the stories in more detail. We did not try to make this a “top ten” list, because it is rather silly to fit the news, or the science, or the stuff the Earth does in a given year into an arbitrary number of events. (What if we had 12 fingers, and “10” was equal to 6+6? Then there would always be 12 things, not 10, on everyone’s list. Makes no sense.) We ended up with 18 items, but note that some of these things are related to each other in a way that would allow us to lump them or split them in different ways. See this post by Joe Romm for a more integrated approach to the year’s events. Also, see what Jeff Masters did here. We only included one non-climate (but related) item to illustrate the larger number of social, cultural, and political things that happened this year. For instance, because of some of the things on this list, Americans are more likely than they were in previous years to accept the possibility that science has something to say about the Earth’s climate and the changes we have experienced or that may be in the future; journalists are starting to take a new look at their own misplaced “objective” stance as well. Also, more politicians are starting to run for office on a pro-science pro-environment platform than has been the case for quite some time.
A failing of this list is that although non-US based people contributed, and it is somewhat global in its scope, it is a bit American based. This is partly because a few of the big stories happened here this year, but also, because the underlying theme really is the realization that climate change is not something of the future, but rather, something of the present, and key lessons learned in that important area of study happened in the American West (fires) the South and Midwest (droughts, crop failures, closing of river ways) and Northeast (Sandy). But many of the items listed here were indeed global, such as extreme heat and extreme cold caused by meteorological changes linked to warming, and of course, drought is widespread.
This list is subject to change, because you are welcome to add suggestions for other stories or for links pertaining to those already listed. Also, the year is not over yet. Anything can happen in the next few days!
Super Storm Sandy, a hybrid of Hurricane Sandy (and very much a true hurricane up to and beyond its landfall in the Greater New York/New Jersey area) was an important event for several reasons. First, the size and strength of the storm bore the hallmarks of global warming enhancement. Second, its very unusual trajectory was caused by a climatic configuration that was almost certainly the result of global warming. The storm would likely not have been as big and powerful as it was, nor would it have likely struck land where it did were it not for the extra greenhouse gasses released by humans over the last century and a half or so.
A third reason Sandy was important is the high storm surge that caused unprecedented and deadly flooding in New York and New Jersey. This surge was made worse by significant global warming caused sea level rise. Sea level rise has been eating away at the coasts for years and has probably caused a lot of flooding that otherwise would not have happened, but this is the first time a major event widely noticed by the mainstream media (even FOX news) involving sea level rise killed a lot of people and did a lot of damage. Fourth, Sandy was an event, but Sandy might also be the “type specimen” for a new kind of storm. It is almost certainly true that global warming Enhanced storms like Sandy will occur more frequently in the future than in the past, but how much more often is not yet known. We will probably have to find out the hard way.
Note that the first few of the links below are to blog posts written by concerned climate scientists, whom the climate change denialists call “alarmists.” You will note that these scientists and writers were saying alarming things as the storm approached. You will also note that what actually happened when Sandy struck was much worse than any of these “alarmists” predicted in one way or another, in some cases, in several ways. This then, is the fifth reason that Sandy is important: The Earth’s weather system (quite unconsciously of course) opened a big huge can of “I told you so” on the climate science denialist world. Sandy washed away many lives, a great deal of property and quite a bit of shoreline. Sandy also washed away a huge portion of what remained of the credibility of the climate science denialist lobby.
3 The Polar Ice Caps and other ice features experienced extreme melting this year.
This year, Arctic sea ice reached a minimum in both extent (how much of the sea is covered during the Arctic summer) and more importantly, total ice volume, reaching the lowest levels in recorded history.
We also increasingly recognized that loss of Arctic sea ice affects Northern Hemisphere weather patterns, including severe cold outbreaks and storm tracks. This sea ice loss is what set up the weather pattern mentioned above that steered Sandy into the US Northeast, as well as extreme cold last winter in other areas.
5 and 6 Two major melting events happened in Greenland this summer.
First, the total amount of ice that has melted off this huge continental glacier reached a record high, with evidence that the rate of melting is not only high, but much higher than predicted or expected. This is especially worrying because the models climatologists use to predict ice melting are being proven too optimistic. Second, and less important but still rather spectacular, was the melting of virtually every square inch of the surface of this ice sheet over a short period of a few days during the hottest part of the summer, a phenomenon observed every few hundred years but nevertheless an ominous event considering that it happened just as the aforementioned record ice mass loss was being observed and measured.
…were formed when the Petermann Glacier of northern Greenland calved a massive piece of its floating tongue, and it is likely that the Pine Island Glacier (West Antarctica) will follow suit this Southern Hemisphere summer. Also, this information is just being reported and we await further evaluation. As summer begins to develop in the Southern Hemisphere, there may be record warmth there in Antarctica. That story will likely be part of next year’s roundup of climate-related woes.
8 More Greenhouse Gasses than Ever
Even though the rate of emissions of greenhouse gasses slowed down temporarily for some regions of the world, those gasses stay in the air after they are released, so this year greenhouse gas levels reached new record high levels
As expected, given the greenhouse gases just mentioned, Record Breaking High Temperatures Continue, 2012 is one of the warmest years since the Age of the Dinosaurs. We’ll wait until the year is totally over to give you a rank, but it is very, very high.
A very rare event caused by drought conditions was the closing of the Mississippi River to traffic in mid-summer at two locations. This is part of a larger and growing problem involving drought, increased demands for water, and the importance of river traffic. Expect to hear more about this over the next couple of years.
In June, a major and very scary derecho event – a thunderstorm and tornado complex large enough to get its own Wikipedia entry – swept across the country. This was one of several large storm systems that caused damage and death in the US this year. There were also large and unprecedented sandstorms in Asia and the US.
We continue to experience, and this will get worse, great Losses in Biodiversity especially in Oceans, much of that due to increased acidification because of the absorption of CO2 in seawater, and overfishing.
18 Unusual Jet Stream Configuration and related changes to general climate patterns…
Many of us who contributed to this list feel that this is potentially the most important of all of the stories, partly because it ties together several other events. Also, it may be that a change in the air currents caused by global warming represents a fundamental yet poorly understood shift in climate patterns. The steering of Hurricane Sandy into the New York and New Jersey metro areas, the extreme killer cold in Eastern Europe and Russia, the “year without a Spring” and the very mild winters, some of the features of drought, and other effects may be “the new normal” owing to a basic shift in how air currents are set up in a high-CO2 world. This December, as we compile this list, this effect has caused extreme cold in Eastern Europe and Russia as well as floods in the UK and unusually warm conditions in France. As of this writing well over 200 people have died in the Ukraine, Poland and Russia from cold conditions. As an ongoing and developing story we are including it provisionally on this list. Two blog posts from midyear of 2011 and 2012 (this one and this one) cover some of this.
The following video provides an excellent overview of this problem:
19 The first climate denial “think” tank to implode as a result of global warming…
… suffered major damage this year. The Heartland Institute, which worked for many years to prove that cigarette smoking was not bad for you, got caught red handed trying to fund an effort explicitly (but secretly) designed to damage science education in public schools. Once caught, they tried to distract attention by equating people who thought the climate science on global warming is based on facts and is not a fraud with well-known serial killers, using large ugly billboards. A large number of Heartland Institute donors backed off after this fiasco and their credibility tanked in the basement. As a result, the Heartland Institute, which never was really that big, is now no longer a factor in the climate change discussion. We failed to drive the wooden stake through Heartland’s heart when it was down. While Heartland has lost much of their funding and Corporate support Hearthland’s Anti-Science Syndrome Hatred Of a Livable Economic System voices still get soapboxes in traditional media =91balance=92 articles and otherwise. Learning how to pound in the wooden stake has merit.
On June 6th, 1944, some 160,000 soldiers aboard about 5,000 boats of diverse design crossed the English Channel and carried out the Invasion of Normandy, one of the more important events in recent history. Many of the soldiers were so sick from choppy seas that leaving the boats and walking or running into German gunfire seemed like a good idea. The invasion was originally planned for the 45h of June, but a very precise weather forecast told the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, to wait until the next day. The forecast for the 6th of June, integrated with the logistical features of the operation, had the landing craft arriving on the German-held beaches just as wave heights were reducing from a level unacceptable for this operation to something that could be managed by most (but not all) vessels.
If you’ve seen “The Longest Day” or any of the other classic semi-documentary dramatizations of D-Day, you may recognize the name Captain James Stagg. Stagg was the meteorologist on Eisenhower’s staff, and as such he was the conduit and translator for the information that came from the meteorology group. That, in turn, was a combination of American and British scientists with very different methods and backgrounds, but both using data and analyses that involves a large number of individuals making observations and crunching numbers, from teams at Scripts Institute in California who developed the primary predictive models in use to British Coast Guard observers making observations at sea several times a day.
The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters by Bruce Parker elucidates the science behind this historic moment in great detail in one of several riveting chapters about the ocean, and stuff the ocean does. Parker is a former chief scientist of the National Ocean Service so he knows something about waves, storms, tides, tsunamis, storm surges, and the like. This book is a nice combination of primer on meteorology ala the ocean and weather-related adventure stories. Throughout the book I kept running into things that I had always wanted to know about … like how exactly did that one huge ship I’ve seen so many times off the Cape Peninsula in South Africa sink? (The ocean did it!), what really was the story behind Stagg’s predictions (as discussed) and what is a future with greater storm surges and rising sea going to look like?
I recommend this book for non-experts who need to know all about ocean related science, who need to better understand the effects and dynamics of storms like Sandy, Tsunamis, and similar events. Parker does not hold back on the science and the detail. This is a very enjoyable way to elevate one’s self to the level of armchair oceanic meteorologist in a few evenings of enjoyable reading!
The IPCC, as you know, comes out with a set of reports every five years. The reports are written by groups of experts. Draft reports are widely accessible to people who register themselves as “experts” and there is no quality control in that process, in order to keep things as transparent as possible. This means that the worst climate change denialists can simply sign up as “experts” and flood the scientists trying to write these reports with irrelevant and stupid comments, thus, I presume, wasting valuable time and effort. But, such is the cost of transparency, which is important.
But, even the climate change denailits, who tend to be a rowdy group with with only a vague grasp, if any, on ethics and who generally have very little respect for truth, have to promise to not release any part of the draft that they have had the privilege to see and comment on. This is very important for reasons that are so blindingly obvious I won’t bother explaining them here.
Well, over the last few days, one of the denialsts, in comments on one of the famous denialist blogs, released sections of the report. The part he released, essentially, said:
“There is this idea X which suggests that Y happens. There is no evidence that this is true but we looked carefully at it and there is still no evidence that this is true.”
But by cherry picking and providing a lie as context, the climate change science denier (CCSD) made it say:
“There is t his idea X which suggests that Y happens. Y means global warming is not real. This is in the ICPP report. This is a game changer.”
Below I’m going to give you links to a handful of the blog posts out there that explain exactly what happened, as well as a document just released by the IPCC expressing regret that one of the “expert reviewers” did this thing that should not have been done.
I wonder if that person’s “expert” status will remain in place. It probably should. The whinging and moaning that would result from someone violating the rules being tossed out, from the CCSD afflicted community, would be more annoying than letting the jerk continue to pretend that he is an “expert” on something.
When I was in 5th grade one of my classmates announced that she and her family (they were a family of singing folksingers) planned to take a trip in a boat they had built around the continent. In that class were were all required to give talks on various topics of our choosing, and she gave a talk on that. We were all impressed by many aspects of the planned adventure, but one thing stood out: During this trip the folk singing family would pass dangerously close to Haiti, which was on very bad terms with the US at that time (I believe it was a Soviet Satellite or something along those lines) and storms could blow their boat into Haitian waters and that would be trouble. This was especially impressive to those of us who had transferred into that public school from the Catholic school nearby, because we knew of “Haiti” as a synonym for “Hell.”
The next year she gave the talk again and told the story about how their boat actually did get blown into Haiti, they were picked up by the Haitian authorities, and actually treated quite nicely. Go figure.
I imagine that a lot of maritime stories go that way. There’s a big plan, and a small boat, and a huge ocean, and things don’t necessarily go the way they are supposed to go. But, in May 2009, when a team of scientists, teachers, conservationists, and sailors launched their journey on the good ship Ocean Watch, intending to circumnavigate the entirety of North and South America, their grandiose expectations were destine to be met, for the most part.
This was a voyage designed to make several points, about the ocean, the culture of the littoral, the conservation of the sea, the effects of climate change, and all that. They encountered major storms, cuddly polar bears, ice, and everything. The voyage started out in Seattle and went north, crossing west to east across the Arctic sea. Sea ice might have deterred them but ultimately they would have Nunavet. They rounded the Northern Continent and visited many cites in the US, Puerto Rico and other islands, several South American countries and the Falklands, Mexico, and then worked their way back along the US coast to Seattle. This took 13 months.
There are these things called “Atmospheric rivers.” They are big long things up in the air that are loaded with water vapor, and much of the rain and other precipitation we experience comes out of them. This is notable when one of these rivers is extra wet, and there is an extra wet one out West in the US.
The Sierra Nevada range will be accumulating something like 16-20 inches of rain, but where that translates into snow, it will be up there in the 12 foot range, maybe more. There will be a very significant risk of flash flooding north of Sacremento and places in northern California and Oregon are going to get very very wet. The Bay Area will see lots of rain but mostly to the north, in Marin County.
A significant rainfall event is underway across portions of the West Coast as unrelenting Pacific moisture slams into the region. Northern California and southern Oregon will see the greatest rainfall totals of 10 to 20 inches by early next week. Strong winds and mountain snow will also impact the area.
The reason I mention this at all (those of you who live there, I’m sure, are totally up on this) is the following: This sort of excess rain is exactly what we expect to see more often because of global warming. This is the effect that global warming has on the hydrological cycle. It fills the Atmospheric Rivers with more moisture than would otherwise develop in them.
PASADENA, Calif. – An international team of experts supported by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) has combined data from multiple satellites and aircraft to produce the most comprehensive and accurate assessment to date of ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica and their contributions to sea level rise.
In a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories report the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. Together, these ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice each year (equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches or 0.95 millimeters) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.01 inches or 0.27 millimeters). About two-thirds of the loss is coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica.
From the abstract of the paper:
We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth’s polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods—especially in Greenland and West Antarctica—and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by –142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, –65 ± 26, and –20 ± 14 gigatonnes year?1, respectively. Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter year?1 to the rate of global sea-level rise.
The melting since about 1992 to the present has contributed to about 0.44 inches of sea level rise (about a fifth of the sea level rise over that period, and there was sea level rise prior to 1992 as well). The main outcome of this study is to clean up the predictions from previous models with much better data and to narrow down the best predictions for future melting. Also, the pace of ice loss now is greater than it was at the beginning of the study period, 20 years ago. Greenland is losing ice about 500% faster now than it was in the early 1990s, while Antarctica is losing ice at about the same rate now as it was then.
Shepherd, A., Ivins, E., A, G., Barletta, V., Bentley, M., Bettadpur, S., Briggs, K., Bromwich, D., Forsberg, R., Galin, N., Horwath, M., Jacobs, S., Joughin, I., King, M., Lenaerts, J., Li, J., Ligtenberg, S., Luckman, A., Luthcke, S., McMillan, M., Meister, R., Milne, G., Mouginot, J., Muir, A., Nicolas, J., Paden, J., Payne, A., Pritchard, H., Rignot, E., Rott, H., Sorensen, L., Scambos, T., Scheuchl, B., Schrama, E., Smith, B., Sundal, A., van Angelen, J., van de Berg, W., van den Broeke, M., Vaughan, D., Velicogna, I., Wahr, J., Whitehouse, P., Wingham, D., Yi, D., Young, D., & Zwally, H. (2012). A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Science, 338 (6111), 1183-1189 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228102
Photo of icebergs in Disko Bay, Greenland from NASA
Despite the fact that the word “Dinosaurs” occurs in the title, this book is only partly about dinosaurs. In fact, I would say it is mostly about mammals, insofar as the critters go. And that’s good because Donald Prothero is probably the world’s leading expert on Fossil Mammals. The dinosaur part is major and interesting, though. One of the mysteries Don addresses is the presence of Dinosaurs in the region of the earth that is dark for 6 months out of the year and generally frozen. Indeed, the “greenhouse effect” was very much stronger (in that there were more greenhouse gasses) in those days than today. All that atmospheric Carbon (in the form of CO2) was eventually to be trapped in the lithosphere, which helped cause the planet to cool to the levels that were around when we, as a species (genus, really) evolved. The world in which everything alive today evolved in is a world with a few hundred parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the world of the “Dino Greenhouse” had much more CO2, and we are quickly heading back to the Dinosaur era level, which is going to really mess us up.
Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet addresses questions of “Yeah, so, it was hot then and everything was fine, so Global Warming is not important.” Don also regales the reader with stories about doing palaeontology, about controversies in the field, and that sort of thing. And, he brings us past the K-T boundary, to the “Cainozoic” (age of “Cain) during which the earth cooled, and mammals took over to be the dominant large visible above ground life form. (Yes, yes, I know, bacteria are the dominant life form, yadda yadda… just don’t look for any murals of bacteria interacting on the wall of the Yale Peabody Musuem any time soon.)
Climate Denial Crock of the Week gives us this new video. Details here.
We are not yet where we need to be with this “when did you stop beating your wife” question sometimes in the form of:
“Can you REALLY attribute ANY storm to Global Warming, really? No? Then is global warming really real? Really?”)
Next time someone says something like that to you, consider answering the question with a question:
“Which major storm of the last two decades or so did not include any of the extra climatic energy provided to this planet by the release of fossil Carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere by human activities? WHICH ONES, DAMMIT!?!??”
This is temperature increasing on the earth over a century or so. Notice that there is what looks like a warming around 1940 on top of an otherwise mostly warming trend, followed by a bunch more warming.
The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, in 2007, referring to data that ran up to 2005 inclusively, said the following:
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
Later, in a congressional hearing, Patrick Michaels, a climate science denialist (one of the meteorologists famous for his rejection of the data and science demonstrating a human induced warming trend) said to a congressional committee, of the statement by the IPCC:
… greenhouse-related warming is clearly below the mean of relevant forecasts by IPCC … the Finding of Endangerment from greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency is based on a very dubious and
critical assumption.
A probabilistic quanti?cation of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming examines both claims and concludes that Michaels is wrong. From the abstract:
This paper examines in detail the statement in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” We use a quantitative probabilistic analysis to evaluate this IPCC statement, and discuss the value of the statement in the policy context. For forcing by greenhouse gases (GHGs) only, we show that there is a greater than 90% probability that the expected warming over 1950–2005 is larger than the total amount (not just ‘‘most’’) of the observed warming. This is because, following current best estimates, negative aerosol forcing has substantially offset the GHG-induced warming. We also consider the expected warming from all anthropogenic forcings using the same probabilistic framework. This requires a re-assessment of the range of possible values for aerosol forcing. We provide evidence that the IPCC estimate for the upper bound of indirect aerosol forcing is almost certainly too high. Our results show that the expected warming due to all human in?uences since 1950 (including aerosol effects) is very similar to the observed warming. Including the effects of natural external forcing factors has a relatively small impact on our 1950–2005 results, but improves the correspondence between model and observations over 1900–2005. Over the longer period, however, externally forced changes are insuf?cient to explain the early twentieth century warming. We suggest that changes in the formation rate of North Atlantic Deep Water may have been a signi?cant contributing factor.
Not only is the IPCC assessment correct according to this new paper, but it is a bit of an understatement.
So much for that little bit of climate science denialism.
Wigley, T., & Santer, B. (2012). A probabilistic quantification of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming Climate Dynamics DOI: 10.1007/s00382-012-1585-8
You may have heard that the release of greenhouse gases has recently gone down, to match levels of several years ago. Why, then, do we have someone saying that greenhouse gasses have reached a new record high?
There are two, maybe three, reasons.
First, even though CO2 release from the US may be lower now than it has been in a few years, it is still high (it was high a few years ago, so we’ve reduced to a level that is high!). More importantly, the US has reduced its release of CO2 primarily for incidental economic reasons. With a recession/depression going on, there is less money being spent on things that burn fuel. But, we are also producing more fossil carbon-containing products that we send to other countries, where that fuel is burned, thus releasing the CO2. So, globally, CO2 release is probably as high as it has ever been, more or less.
Second, the greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere for a long time. Releasing less does not make what is there go away, really. So if we add less for a couple of years, we still increase the amount.
Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Reach New Record: WMO Bulletin highlights pivotal role of carbon sinks
Geneva, 20 November (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Between 1990 and 2011 there was a 30% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping long-lived gases.
At this point I would like to pause and note something important. Here we learn that there has been a 30% increase in warming effects from 1990 onward. This does not mean, however, that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) started in 1990. You will often see Climate Science Denialists refer to events earlier in the last 100 years as evidence that global warming is not real. If global warming supposedly causes large storms, and there was a large storm in the 1930s, or if global warming supposedly causes droughts, and there was the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, then global warming is not real, the story goes. However, global warming is largely the result of the release of Carbon from the burning of coal and petroleum, and that (especially the coal) started way back in the 18th century and really took off in the mid 19th century. Global warming and its effects have certainly been much more significant over the last several decades, but the effects are much older than that. To return to the UN report…
Since the start of the industrial era in 1750, about 375 billion tonnes of carbon have been released into the atmosphere as CO2, primarily from fossil fuel combustion, according to WMO’s 2011 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which had a special focus on the carbon cycle. About half of this carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere.
“These billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will remain there for centuries, causing our planet to warm further and impacting on all aspects of life on earth,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “Future emissions will only compound the situation.”
“Until now, carbon sinks have absorbed nearly half of the carbon dioxide humans emitted in the atmosphere, but this will not necessarily continue in the future. We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs. There are many additional interactions between greenhouse gases, Earth’s biosphere and oceans, and we need to boost our monitoring capability and scientific knowledge in order to better understand these,” said Mr Jarraud.
“WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, spanning more than 50 countries, provides accurate measurements which form the basis of our understanding of greenhouse gas concentrations, including their many sources, sinks and chemical transformations in the atmosphere,” said Mr Jarraud.
The role of carbon sinks is pivotal in the overall carbon equation. If the extra CO2 emitted is stored in reservoirs such as the deep oceans, it could be trapped for hundreds or even thousands of years. By contrast, new forests retain carbon for a much shorter time span.
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations – and not emissions – of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.
CO2 is the most important of the long-lived greenhouse gases – so named because they trap radiation within the Earth’s atmosphere causing it to warm. Human activities, such as fossil fuel burning and land use change (for instance, tropical deforestation), are the main sources of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The other main long-lived greenhouse gases are methane and nitrous oxide. Increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are drivers of climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, quoted in the bulletin, shows that from 1990 to 2011, radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 30%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this increase. Total radiative forcing of all long-lived greenhouse gases was the CO2 equivalent of 473 parts per million in 2011.
The report goes on to state that CO2 is the single most important human generated greenhouse gas, but also discusses methane, which I mentioned above, and discusses Nitrous oxide as well.
(Thanks to Brad Johnson for the info on hydrocarbon exports.)
by Maggie Koerth-Baker
by Haydn Washington and John Cook
by Daniel Grossman, TEDx Books (Kindle Single)
by Shawn Lawrence Otto
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, a novel by Gareth Renowden
by Michael Mann
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by Chris Mooney
by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
by Bruce Parker elucidates the science behind this historic moment in great detail in one of several riveting chapters about the ocean, and stuff the ocean does. Parker is a former chief scientist of the National Ocean Service so he knows something about waves, storms, tides, tsunamis, storm surges, and the like. This book is a nice combination of primer on meteorology ala the ocean and weather-related adventure stories. Throughout the book I kept running into things that I had always wanted to know about … like how exactly did that one huge ship I’ve seen so many times off the Cape Peninsula in South Africa sink? (The ocean did it!), what really was the story behind Stagg’s predictions (as discussed) and what is a future with greater storm surges and rising sea going to look like?
. The book was written by Herb McCormick who also wrote 
, and includes photos by David Thoreson. David Rockefeller Jr. wrote the Forward. It looks like this, but much bigger:
