The fourth in a series of international reports, due out tomorrow, reflects better science and more-precise models.
When the UN-organized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents its projections for global warming and future climate changes tomorrow, the report's hallmark will be a far greater level of certainty and precision than what was expressed in the last IPCC report, issued in 2001. "The certainty is huge," says Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada's top climate modeling expert and a coauthor of the new IPCC report.
To be sure, continued warming observed since 2001 is part of that certainty. But climatologists say the bigger factor is the broad accumulation of science over the past six years that has increased the precision with which climate models predict future climate change, debunked alternative hypotheses advanced by skeptics, and identified the footprint of man-made climate change in every corner of the earth.
As Weaver put it, the IPCC has not just found a smoking gun linking greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Rather, its fourth report delivers a smoking arsenal. "There are many, many smoking guns," he says. "It's a battalion of smoking intercontinental ballistic missiles."
Jerry Mahlman, a senior research associate at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, CO, and a peer reviewer for the IPCC, says that while the final language is still being hammered out, the report might end up expressing 99 percent certainty that greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, are warming Earth, up from "greater than 90 percent" confidence in the previous report. "It's very obvious that the earth is warming up exactly as we've projected it to do so," says Mahlman. One recent draft notes that IPCC's projection in 1990 that global average temperature would rise by between 0.15 and 0.3 °C per decade through 2005 compares well with the 0.2 °C increase that actually occurred.
Today, many detailed scientific reports are detecting global warming's fingerprints rather than simply glimpsing the outline of its footprint. The second and third IPCC assessments, issued in 1996 and 2001, respectively, built a case for man-made climate change on increased global average temperature above that expected from natural variability. Weaver says the fourth report, in contrast, will identify the signal of man-made climate change in every region of the globe and in many more variables beyond temperature, such as increases in intense tropical cyclones and forest fires.
"We're finding the signal of climate change in more and more places," says Stanley Solomon, a scientist with NCAR's Earth & Sun Systems Lab. For example, last year Solomon published the first definitive identification of man-made climate change in the thermosphere, the uppermost layer of Earth's atmosphere. The thermosphere was, paradoxically, predicted to cool and thin with increased carbon dioxide. And that is exactly what Solomon and his colleagues found. They detected the expected cooling by noting a small but statistically significant decline in the drag on satellites traveling through the thermosphere.
The use of news reports as sources calls a key finding into question.
Speaking at MIT, Obama countered recent statements from his administration that climate legislation is bogged down.
Amid rising seas, a California modeling effort recommends abandoning land tracts in the Sacramento Delta.
If we say it enough times it must be true...
Why do "global warmers" continue to ignore the question: Who/what warmed up the earth to cycle it out of the last ice age? As far as I know, Exxon-Mobile wasn't refining crude oil back then, and Ford hadn't rolled the first Model A off the assembly line.
Re: If we say it enoug times it must be true...
I haven't published this yet, but the answer is that as the cavemen killed the wooly mammoths the campfires they built to cook the mammoth meat caused it. If we repeat this enough, it will become the accepted explanation. Just like the current theory, we only have to show a correlation, no need to show any cause or entertain any other ideas.
Re: If we say it enough times it must be true...
A better question to ask may be, why do you choose to not believe in the face of overwhelming evidence? By that way of thinking, the only logical explanation for global warming is that a covert organization made up of tree hugging, anti-oil greenies somehow paid off 99% of the worlds top scientists to lie about their findings and promote their evil agenda of destroying the U.S. economy.
Re: If we say it enough times it must be true...
You might think your question is better, but I think is it folly to ignore something so obvious. What has been warming the earth up since the last ice age? It can not have been industry/automobiles; they did not exist.
Re: If we say it enough times it must be true...
The shortest answer I can make to your ice age question is that the ice ages that we can "see" occured on a fairly regular schedule. Why this is is currently under debate, some say it may be due to natural cycles of our sun or flucuations in earth's orbit. The problem is that what is happening now appears for the moment to be changes operating at rates that exceede what data we have about past "normal" climate change.
Well now that I think about it, there were some events in the fossil record that showed rapid global cilmate change has occured in the past without man to precipiate it.. but people don't like talk about them because to compare them to now would be fear mongering.
Re: If we say it enough times it must be true...
Fair enough. The answer is, the natural cycle is responsible for the majority of this warming. Indeed, the glaciers receeded long before the automobile. In the past 100 years or so however, human causes have begun to eclipse and surpass this natural effect.
Re: If we say it enough times it must be true...
your second sentence has no basis (other than repetition). corelation is not cause. specify cause, show observable and repeatable phenomena, and then we might be getting somewhere.
Solomon finds changes in the thermosphere as predicted by the models, and cites this as an affirmative signal of man-made climate change. However, he then admits that solar-driven changes are "extremely large above 100 kilometers." How can he attribute the changes as man-made in light of this admission?
Not having read his paper I would have to assume that he has taken enough measurments over time to show a trend. So yes if e were to only take a few measurments it would be virtually impossible to see the trend through the "noise" but gather enough data from multiple sources over time and you can come to some pretty good conclusions.
this doesn't make sense either. "enough measurements over enough time"? we have only KNOWN about the thermosphere for less than 100 years. how can measurements of high altitude effects vs. lower altitude effects be taken and compared over an appropriate (geologic) interval? this is more of the same - I see a short-term trend, and extrapolate to infinity. this is not science.
Doom for current fossil fuels industries?
If "man-made" CO2 from the existing practice of un-earthing previously stored solar energy and sequestered CO2 in the form of coal, oil and natural gas is truly the culprit, won't those existing industries need to be shutdown, ASAP?
Won't we need a massive, planetary shift in the energy paradigm from harvesting buried stored solar energy / sequestered CO2 to harvesting sustainable bio-fuels that close the carbon cycle, potentially in addition to nuclear, geothermal, wind, tidal, water, .... ?
The fossil fuels industries, as we know them today, can quit worrying about / exploring / investing money looking for new buried deposits to harvest?
Aren't they the industries that have a tremendous vested interest in triple checking that they're truly the middlemen of the problem?
And, being put out of that business that they have so heavily invested in?
Re: Doom for current fossil fuels industries?
There's a wide chasm between "triple checking" data objectively and pushing a campaign of deceit with a preconceived, self-benefitting conclusion.
Re: Doom for current fossil fuels industries?
Who?
Me?
The standard response of being accused.
Guilty or not.
What if, most unexpectedly, CO2 from existing practices is, somehow, NOT the culprit / solution?
Granted, such industries have an obvious self-preservation bias.
OTOH, if those industries ARE the root of a serious global problem, shutting them down is a tangible consequence demonstrating the magnitude of the changes necessary.
http://ceos.cnes.fr:8100/cdrom-98/ceos1/science/dg/dg1.htm
Given that CO2 absorbs at 15.5 µm and 4.3 µm, AND that the atmosphere is 100% opaque in these (and CO2's other bands), isn't CO2 already providing all of the global warming that it can? As CO2 continues to increase, isn't the only effect simply trapping that energy closer to the ground, and doesn't weather keep that air well stirred? I'm yet to be convinced CO2 increases increase the overall energy retention. Note in the figures of the link that H2O accounts for nearly all of the energy absorbed in the atmosphere. H2O accounts for more than 95% of the total greenhouse effect. CO2 is already doing all it can.
Further, consider: Chill a large bowl of water in a large open container. Allow sufficient time for the chilled water to equilibrate with the air. Now, simply seal the container to the atmosphere such that no gas can enter or leave the system (and turn off the chiller). What will happen as the water and container warm to ambient? The only change inside the container will be that the relative humidity will approach 100% AND the CO2 concentration in the air will increase as the solubility of CO2 in the warming water decreases. Given basic science we all learned in our sophomore classes, we know how equilibrium works. The only conclusion I can draw is that CO2 rises as a result of global warming. It is not a cause!
good lord! are you trying to discuss SCIENCE with the global warming true believers!? that's madness! they have a CONSENSUS! weren't you listening!?
Wow, you really have out foxed all those do-do climatolgists! Boy are they dumb; just a high school deploma let's you see right through the the smoke screen they have set up just to get more funding! Thank you for revealing this to us all.
World forum for Climate Change discussion
I believe the world greatly needs a genuine forum to discuss the "facts" (pro and con).
A forum that is open to all.
With no pre-conceived outcome.
That will genuinely accept all supporters and doubters.
Without fear, disrespect, intimidation or other pointless "flaming".
A forum that will attempt to address all of the pros and cons, one by one, to the n'th degree.
A forum where the proponents can further investigate, report and augment their arguments and the opponents, likewise, can offer their skeptical points for the proponents to address.
My hope would be for an eventual greater consensus, whatever it might be.
Little point in wasting trillions of dollars and years of time on "solutions" that don't, in the end, make for a successful and timely response.
For example, should Global Melting, for whatever reason, be unstoppable, at this point in time, and the seas are truly going to rise 20 or 200 or whatever feet, moving the world's coastal population (1/2 the Earth's population?) to higher ground, as one potential response, might be the wisest initial expenditure of time and efforts?
Re: World forum for Climate Change discussion
I believe the estimate in this article was 43 cm (17 inches) tops! Where do the fear and doomers think all this water is coming from? They are forgetting that when ice melts its volume is reduced. The reduction in ice below sea level will make room for the melting ice that exists above sea level. Remember when God told Noah that he would never again destroy the earth by flood. Relax already! If a few in the beach condo crowd have to add a couple of feet to their existing foundation, I'm sure they can handle it.
Re: World forum for Climate Change discussion
Forgive me if I am regurgitating an untruth.
I guess exactly my point.
Is there, somewhere, a more definitive answer to "how much" the seas might rise, if all of the ice (sequestered fresh water) that is not already supported by the seas (particularly the floating Arctic Ice Cap) were to melt? Greenland, the Antarctic and toss in various glaciers.
An answer that had undergone the slings and arrows of repeated review and conjecture?
A place where the speculation can, over time, settle down to one, or maybe a few, generally agreed upon scenarios?
Re: World forum for Climate Change discussion
The floating ice would perhaps even out. An ice cube floating in a glass of water melts but does not appreciably change the level of liquid in the glass. On the other hand, there is one hell of a lot of land ice on both Greenland and Antarctica. Scientific estimates put sea levels rising around 30 feet for each continent should they melt completely. Have you people not seen Al Gore's movie? C'mon.
Re: World forum for Climate Change discussion
Sea levels are rising 2mm per year. At this rate, I think 30 feet is a bit unreasonable.
7 Meters for Greenland; 65M for Antarctica ?
More of the problems I have with all of the "info" out there.
A very recent Technology Review article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18102/
claimed 7 meters (~21 feet) sea rise if all of Greenland's ice melted and 65 meters (~200 feet) if all of the fresh water sequestered (ice) on Antarctica entered the seas.
How many years, at what "warm" temperature, will it take for "all" (or enough) of the ice to melt to make a real / measurable / discernible / demonstrable difference?
43 cm (17 inches) - only glaciers & thermal expansion
According to other reports, about this soon to be released report, the 43 cm / 17 inch rise in sea levels is only extrapolated from glacial melt and thermal expansion of existing ocean waters.
No contribution from "ice sheet" melting was considered.
Guest (gdwilhite)
Re: What do we know about cycles of solar activity?
I wholeheartedly agree! I'm delighted to see all the attention devoted to factors affecting climate change. However, we need more
evidence to solidify support for serious public policy changes.
For example, one HUGE factor that gets almost no public attention is solar activity. Are there studies providing solid evidence that a solar activity cycle is or is not a major culprit?
I'm not being a smart a** here. This is a legitimate question: If there were no humans on Earth, would the climate still go through warming and cooling cyles?
Well we've bee taught there was at least one ice age, and it occurred when there were a LOT LESS humans on earth. Obviously the earth has been warming since the ice age. And there were NO automobiles or industry when the siginificant warming was occuring.
There have actually been thousands of ice ages. They are part of the natural climate cycle of the earth. Global warming, refers to a deviation beyond the range of this expected cycle.
How do we know what the cycle is if we can't agree on how many ice ages there were? Therefore, how do we know if the warming we are seeing today is not a natural warming effect?
I agree with the gases concept but the argument seems to lack in proof.
Actually the majority of the debate over how many ice ages the earth has had is a debate between religion and science/evolution, and the majority of the scientific community who believe in the evolution of earth and it's 4 and a half billion year history also believe that the earth has gone through a LOT of iceages, many continental joinings and partings, and the crust of the earth has even been completely cycled into the planet a few times. So it isn't unfair to say that for the most part there is an agreement on roughly how many ice ages the earth has had, in addition to that it doesn't really matter whether the earth has had 1000 or 3 ice ages, the point is whether the rise and melting of these iceages was human caused or not.
It isn't CO2 that is causing global warming, its the hot air from lawyers and politicians. Just look at their dramatically increasing numbers and plot it against temperature rising. My solution is that we should be adapting to global warming by building more landfills to sequester the carbon; building massive dams to capture fresh water to reduce oceans from rising; increasing GM plant production to increase CO2 absorption; building more nuclear plants; and shifting production from the more contaminating China/India producers to more efficient and environmentally efficient US companies. But then those aren't politically correct ideas.
I remember when this began one major source of cause was the expelling of gas from bovin population growth. What ever happened to that idea?
what? The implication is always that we have to reduce carbon emissions. Is this estimated to do any good?
I understand why many people may be skeptical of the actual cause of the current trends in global warming, but isn't it kind of a pointless debate, since we are going to have to change to alternative fuel sources anyway, since we are quickly running out of oil. I don't know how much is supposedly left, but I hear that we will have to switch completely from dependence upon it in the next 50 years. my point is that we are going to have to stop using the supposed sources of carbon dioxide anyway, so why don't we put more money towards finding new and better energy sources and less towards researching if global warming is a reason we have to make the change.
There's an abundant supply of coal for at least the next century or two. Coal produces even more CO2 per unit of energy than oil does.
Is that clean burning coal? (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4468076.stm ).
Before I start, I do believe man has affected the environment, but I still have some doubts.
How can we tell that man alone is responsible?
Man has only been on the Earth (depending upon who you ask) about 250,000 years or more in one form or another. It has only been a few hundred years since people stopped believing the sun revolved around the Earth.
Our technology has improved over the years allow better tracking of the environment. But is it good to base all your hypothesis only on relatively new data?
How do we know that there are not 40 year or 40 thousand year (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_cycle ) climate cycle.
You can indicate that the trends are above the norms, but what are the norms and a cycle?
When ice shelves break from Greenland, and yet growing from (see http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp ) within.
Who is to know?
The earth heats and cools on cycles that take thousands of years. We are much better then the nature. In 50 years we did what the nature probably wouldn’t do in 500; and we will do much better in the next 50.
Well, at least it won’t be our problem. We will not leave forever anyways…
Everybody says that just few years ago the winters were colder and longer (a lot of people from all continents say the same) and there is still people that “$$$pretend$$$” not believe in global warming.
thank you for your extremely scientific and enlightened viewpoint.
We did a really good job from 1900 to 1940 too (when a majority of the 20th century warming occurred). Oh wait! We didn't produce much CO2 in the early 20th century. Did we cut down CO2 emmissions between 1940 and 1970? The temperature fell during that 30 year period while CO2 emmissions significantly.
I'm not a scientist, but I've read and watched much on this issue. As you point out, the science on many issues is not perfect. But the evidence in this case is quite convincing. Many studies show a virtually identical correlation between the warming and cooling cycles and CO2 levels in the atmosphere. We know this from Ice core samples that go back 100's of thousands of years. It therefor stands to reason that the currently accellerating warming going on can be attirbuted to the also accellerating CO2 increases we've seen. And nobody is debating where the CO2 is coming from.
Once again we stand on the brink of another man made disaster. After decades of ignoring scientific evidence of the effects that over fishing, clear-cut logging, and complete ecosystem destruction would have on all of us, the human race has finally decided at the 11th hour to take the problem of global warming seriously. I am sorry to inform all our fire loving Neanderthal cousins out there, that the opportunity to actually do something about it has already come and gone a long long time ago.
your subject describes you. you offer no science as basis, but make blanket statements which are just silly. you sound like one of the sky is falling eco-crybabies from the 60s who all claimed that we'd not be able to breathe the air or find water to drink by Y2K. moderate changes (which had their impact locally far more than widely/globally) to policy were more than suficient to address the trends. screaming out that we've already lost the battle when we really don't even know what the battle is as of yet is just foolish.
What exactly do you offer besides a fervent belief that the majority of the world's scientific specialist in this area are probably wrong and even involved in a conspiracy to decive us? That is indeed a lot of hot air.
It's amazing how successful the oil industry and the commercial interests in general has been in getting people to disbelieve what a reputable majority of scientist are telling them. The simple fact is that people whose lives revolve around profit do not care what happens when they are gone. Further the rest believe in whatever conspiracy theory they can promote or alternatively that "God" will never let something bad happen to "His" creation.
You will notice that until Shell ,Exxon and BP became the big players in the alternative power game that not one major political figure would touch the global warming(sic) issue.Once again the only religion on the planet is power and money,funny how that works!
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed
reneverheij
1 Comment
"Once the funding breaks down, they'll break down."
"Once the funding breaks down, they'll break down."
A sound scientific argument. 'They have no money, so they must be wrong.' Does this gentleman understand the difference between science and politics?
Reply
lschuber
13 Comments
Re:
Eventually, as people see daily that warmer is actually better, people will forget about the scientific consensus regarding climate change, just as they have forgotten the scientific consensus regarding eugenics. The money that will dry up is the politically driven funding for computer climate models and for headline grabbing climate "science".
Reply
tla723
20 Comments
Re:
Two serious flaws in your arguement: 1. Warmer is not better, unless you think that drought and rising sea levels are a good thing. You may find a few people in coastal cities and arid regions who disagree. 2. The scientific community is not driven by the desire to grab headlines. They simply study the evidence and report their findings. On the other hand, you will find heavy bias behind the sceptics arguments, namely big oil funding.
Reply
lschuber
13 Comments
Re: Warmer is Better
I believe the dinosaurs would argue that warmer is better. Their MUCH warmer environment supported a bio-system with sufficient food to support a wide variety of building-sized animals.
Perhaps a few people will be inconvenienced, even killed, but we all die regardless, even if Aubrey is correct. It even seems likely many species will be inconvenienced, a few even driven to extinction, but again, we all do in the end. With a multibillion year track record, life has a 0.1% success rate so far. Why would we suppose it might improve? It is foolish to suppose it will worsen. As popularized in "Jurassic Park," life will find a way. The only certainty is change. The only hope for our posterity is technological improvement. The notion of reduction is certainly a "cure" that is worse than the purported disease.
Reply
aeroculus
1 Comment
Re: Warmer is Better
to ischuber: you should be ashamed to participate in this conversation if you actually use 'Jurassic Park' to make a scientific point
Reply
lschuber
13 Comments
Re: Warmer is Better
I trust you intended that in humor.
Reply
tla723
20 Comments
Re: Warmer is Better
I suppose if your perspective is on a scale that reaches millions of years and looks at overall evolutionary success and failure, I will concede to your point that warmer may be better. If OTOH your rooted in the "here and now" as most of us are, the "inconveniences" you refer to seem more like catastrophic events. The social and financial collapse of a civilization are not things I put in the "better" category. But that's just me I suppose.
Reply
bmn
75 Comments
Re:
the problem with your point #2 is that it is wrong. they ARE just grabbing headlines.
Reply
tla723
20 Comments
Re:
losing funding doesn't make you wrong, being wrong makes you lose funding.
Reply
bmn
75 Comments
Re:
not in the UN (or in DC for that matter).
Reply