We have had a cool summer here in Minnesota, and this has brought out the miscreants who for their own reasons do not want to get on board with the simple, well demonstrated scientific fact that global temperatures have risen, that we humans are the primary cause, and that this climate change has negative consequences.
Continue reading Global Warming, The Decline of the Moose, and “Minnesota Nice”
What they are referring to is a paper by Mojib Latif in which he notes that the media often misrepresent global warming as a continuous, year by year increase in temperature. The truth, of course, is that annual temperature varies up and down but the baseline for this variation has been going continuously up.
Like a road going up a mountain. Often the road goes up and down and up and down cross the complex terrain of the mountain side. If, while driving up this hypothetical mountain, the road dips down for a moment, one does not say “Oh, we’re going home now. This whole driving up the mountain thing is over. We just dipped down. No more up. That’s the end of it.” and then turn around and drive home.
I mean, really, this is pretty freakin’ simple.
If you’d like to view Latif’s power point (as a PDF file) click here. Slide three is the one these morons are talking about.
Here is a major press release by Elizabeth K. Gardner on the link between climate change and poverty, reproduced below the fold for your edification.
The nation’s largest business group is asking U.S. EPA to hold a public debate on climate change science — or face litigation — as the agency prepares to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
…
“They don’t have the science to support the endangerment finding,” Bill Kovacs, the chamber’s vice president for environment, regulatory and government affairs, said in an interview. “We can’t just take their word for it.”
This has come up a couple of times recently, so I thought I’d summarize the information here.
The distribution of water on Earth in cubic kilometers
| Salt water: | 1,318,062,462 | Glaciers: | 28,005,430 |
| Groundwater: | 12,270,210 |
| Lakes: | 106,396 |
| Swamps: | 13,452 |
| Rivers: | 2,446 |
| Vapor: | 13,000 |
| Biological: | 1,120 |
(Biological means like your spit and guts and all the juicy parts of worms and tree saps and water in bacteria and stuff.)
Wikipedia
Continue reading Distribution of Water on the Earth
This is one of those science stories that is on one hand fairly simple, and on the other hand fairly complex, where the interface between simplicity and complexity causes little balls of misunderstanding to come flying out of the mix like pieces of raw pizza dough if the guy making the pizza was the Tasmanian Devil from the cartoons.
What is true: A scientist named Ryskin proposes that decadal or century scale minor wiggling in the measured Earth’s magnetic field is influenced by changes in ocean currents. Plausible. Interesting. Could explain some things. Not earthshaking.
What is not true: The earth’s magnetic field is caused by ocean currents. The earth’s magnetic field’s long term variations, like reversals in field orientation, are caused by ocean current changes. The Earth’s magnetic field causes oceanic current changes or the currents are the sole cause of secular variation. The cause of the earth’s magnetic field is not, as previously thought, the molten dynamo thingie inside the earth.
Let me explain.
Continue reading New theory on Earth’s Magnetic Field: Theory interesting, reporting botched
One item is just published in the Journal of Climate. Simply put, the use of some very sophisticated and probably quite trustworthy models suggests that extratropical cyclones (so this means winter storms and such, mainly) will have a good deal more precipitation in them.
In the model …
… There is a small reduction in the number of cyclones but no significant changes in the extremes of wind and vorticity in both hemispheres. … The largest changes are in the total precipitation, where a significant increase is seen. Cumulative precipitation along the tracks of the cyclones increases by some 11% per track … while the extreme precipitation is close to … (some 27%).
In another study not available to me but coming out in the same journal in a few days, the overall effects of climate change are predicted to be much worse than previously thought.
This is based on MIT’s Integrated Global Systems Model, which is a computer simulation of both global economic activity and climatic systems. This mega-simulation was run 400 times using slight variations in input parameters. According to a press release:
The new projections… indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the [previous major study, conducted in] 2003 … of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Continue reading New Global Warming Predictions: Bad news and really bad news.
According to Texas Education Expert!
She knows because she looked at some web sites!!!!!!!!! Holy Crap!!!!
Educator alert: The best example of the Naturalistic Fallacy EVAH!!!! The money quote is….
“Carbon Dioxide is Natural. It is not harmful. It is part of earth’s life cycle. And yet we are being told we have to reduce this natural substance, and reduce the american standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is a naturally occurring in the Earth.”
Here it is… Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann:
Monica sent me a link to a Faux News story on global warming, which makes the claim that global warming is not real because ice is expanding, and not contracting, in Antarctica. It also makes the claim that 90 percent of the earth’s ice and 80 percent of the earth’s fresh water is in Antarctica, which I assume is mentioned because it would make Antarctica seem more important than other parts of the world, and thus the “fact” that global warming is not happening there is proof of … whatever.
I’d like to clarify.
To start with, let’s get the fresh water thing straight. Most of the fresh water that matters to the average person on the average day is not in Antarctica. It is in the sky. From where I sit right now, I can see this lake, and the lake is charged from groundwater, and most of this groundwater comes from another lake uphill from this lake, etc. etc. But all of this … the local lakes and groundwater … is charged from rain, and this rain comes from the sky, and the clouds in the sky picked up most of this moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. Around the world, a huge percentage of the rainwater comes from either the ocean or from continental sources which in turn came from the ocean.
In other words, the vast majority of immediately relevant fresh water comes from salt water. Most of the fresh water that matters comes from the huge reservoirs of salt water known as the oceans and seas, and beyond this, knowing the percentage of fresh water that is either here or there is neither here nor there. What matters is the process.
But even so, Fox has it wrong. It is true that about 90 percent of the world’s ice is in Antarctica. I’m not sure why that matters to Fox news. If ten percent of that ice melted, sea levels would rise catastrophically. It is not true that 80 percent of the worlds’ fresh water is in Antarctica. Just under 70% of the world’s fresh water is distributed among the frozen reservoirs (Antarctica, the northern ice fields, and mountain glaciers); Just over 30% is in the form of ground water, and just under one percent is evenly distributed between water that is in the air and about to fall on us, and water that is on the surface (lakes, rivers, etc.) most of which is on it’s way back into the ocean.
So, let’s characterize the whole water situation on the earth like this: Most of the water is in the ocean. Over time, a small percentage of this water evaporates and falls as rain back on the ocean. Of this, a small percentage falls temporarily on land and re-joins the ocean in a matter of days or months.
As this is happening, two great reservoirs are formed and grow or shrink over time, one in ice and one in groundwater.
Regarding the seeming inability of Antarctica to cooperate with the conspiratorial liberal agenda to make up this whole “Global Warming” thing; There is nothing going on here. Globally, averaging out the entire planet, there is warming. This warming is severe in the Arctic, and less severe in the Antarctic, and there are even regions in the Antarctic that are cooler and/or have more ice forming. However, there are also parts of the Antarctic where there are ice masses that are melting down and/or falling into the ocean.
So this is Fox News as an Insurance Appraiser:
“So, this is your car, and you claim it was in an accident?”
“Yes, see how the front is all mashed up?”
“Hey, what I’m looking at is the trunk, and it’s fine. I see no evidence of an accident.”
“But look, the engine is sitting in the front seat and the windshield is busted up, and the fenders are all crumple…..”
“No, no, no … look here. The gas tank … which holds the gas which could blow up in an accident … is fine. The gas tank is totally intact.”
“But wait, the front half of the car is crumpled and in pieces because that is where the accident happened….”
“The back half of the car, where the trunk is where we keep the spare tire, and the gas tank which could explode, are just fine. No accident. No insurance payment. ….”
Whack!!!
(That was the sound of the car’s owner slapping the Fox Insurance Appraiser upside the head.)
So instead of reading some stupid-ass article from Fox News, check out this alarming Liberal Agenda Scare Tactic piece from the BBC
Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do.
For example, Mr. Morano said he once spotted former Vice President Al Gore on an airplane returning from a climate conference in Bali. Mr. Gore was posing for photos with well-wishers, and Mr. Morano said he had asked if he, too, could have his picture taken with Mr. Gore.
He refused, Mr. Morano said.
“You attack me all the time,” Mr. Gore said, according to Mr. Morano.
“Yes, we do,” Mr. Morano said he had replied.
Mr. Gore’s office said Mr. Gore had no memory of the encounter. Mr. Morano does not care. He tells the story anyway.
A very large percentage of the earth’s land masses were covered by glacial ice during the last glaciation. Right now it is about 10%, but during the Ice Age it was much more. Enough of the earth’s water was trapped in this glacial ice that the oceans were about 120 to 150 meters lower than they are now. The thicker ice sheets were one or two kilometers thick, and they tended to slide around quite a bit, grinding down the surface of the earth and turning bedrock into dust and cobbles.
Behold this humble passage by Darwin, which is what immediately follows his discussion of the octopus. This passage is a touchstone to several important aspects of what Darwin was doing and thinking, and is a poignant link to what Darwin did not know:
Continue reading Darwin Crossing The Atlantic
This is the seventh in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
This installment is about sea level rise and fall, in the past. Sea level change that results from the formation and melting of glaciers not only has an enormous impact on the physical nature of the landscape, but it also would not have gone unnoticed by people living ever pretty far from the sea!
With large amounts of the world’s water trapped in glaciers (mainly continental glaciers), the sea level drops. When that ice melts, the sea level rises.
As you know, the earth is covered by two kinds of surface: Continents, which are relatively tall and buoyant and which have a tendency to move around, and sea floor, which is structurally different from the continents. But if you look at the oceans, you will see that they cover both sea floor and parts of the continents. The parts of the continents that are covered by sea floor are typically referred to as “continental shelf.” All this … this continental shelf … really is the edge of the continents themselves that happen at the moment to be covered with the sea. There are places, like the coast of California, where there is no shelf, and other places, like the coast of New England, much of the Caribbean and large parts of the Gulf of Mexico, that have extensive shelf. If you removed all the water from this shelf, you could fit a couple of more New England states between Boston (now on the coast) and the new coast line.
Continue reading Global Warming, the Blog Epic ~ 07 ~ Sea Level Change