Gorebal Warming

post a link, then we'll talk

 

Needless to say I'm shocked, shocked to find that one can still get frostbite in the Arctic. Yawn.

 

As I personally know someone who has lead expeditions to the Arctic and observed first-hand the melting effects caused by "gorebal" warming (Kate Moran, professor of oceanography and ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island); I give much more weight to her testimony than some rant in the "American Thinker".

 

You're right, it is shocking... shocking to discover that there are still temperature variations around the world. shocking to discover that it still gets cold in winter. shocking to discover that there are still snow storms.

You say this feb was the coldest in the past century... I can completely believe you, it was pretty darned cold here in MN. However, one month doesn't really tell us much - seasonal variations alone are pretty large (sometimes winter starts a little earlier, sometimes a little later, or whatever). Heck, just ask anyone in Cleveland - temperatures there don't vary along the same lines as the rest of the country. If the lake freezes, the winter gets bitterly cold. if it doesn't, it stays much warmer, but you get a lot more snow. Go figure.

How about looking at temperature averages on a yearly basis? Take the highs and lows from each day and average them to get a daily average. Take those averages combined to get a yearly temperature average. And then compare.

NASA has done this. They showed that 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2004 were the four warmest years since 1890 (in an article posted in 2005 http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingat...arth_warm.html).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Mar 14 2007, 01:29 PM) [snapback]405458[/snapback]</div>

Annual temperature averages for the entire globe. Some doofus wrote in our local newspaper about how cold it is hear while trying to use this to debunk climate change.

 

The article you gave us was an opinion piece. Here's what happened according to the AP:

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1048709.html

Looks like a series of bad luck to me...they didn't even get a chance to make it to the "rifts" that you spoke of.

Or straight from the horses' mouths...

http://www.bancroftarnesen.com/explore/Arc...7/pressroom.jsp

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 14 2007, 11:43 AM) [snapback]405470[/snapback]</div>

Algore used just these kinds of stories as "evidence" in his movie. The Katrina and polar bears drowning/decline references are two that come to mind. I don't think he was embarrassed.

Keep an open mind. Enjoy the irony. Conserve when possible, but don't dictate an absolute solution to a natural phenomenon that 1) may not be worse due to mankind's contributions, and 2) that mankind's efforts to "fix" may not impact at all.

BTW - I finally saw the Vostok graph where temp and CO2 plots overlaid on the Wikipedia site - not on two differnet y axes like Algore showed. According to the overlaid graph, it sure looks like temp changes lead CO2 changes and not the other way 'round. Of course, who can be certain with extrapolated data, eh?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Mar 14 2007, 01:29 PM) [snapback]405458[/snapback]</div>

While in no way arguing for or against global warming, I have to laugh at Nasa's data about the "four warmest years since 1890". Just how did Nasa measure global temperature's in 1890? Other sites report data back to the 1870's. Serious scientists have at least some discussion on the difficulties in comparisons involving data collected using vastly different technologies. Our modern view of the globe where satellites are used for this stuff is very recent. I take any span back to 1890 or earlier with a very large grain of salt. The situation might not be as dire or it could be far worse. Given phenomena like glacial retreat, I suspect the latter.

BTW, your link was dead when I tried it - I wanted to see if it had any discussion on recent "warmest year" data vs. stuff going back to 1890.

- Tom

 

When Al Gore (BTW, he does have a first and last name) came out with the movie, I did have some reservations about it. It is almost impossible to make a documentary about a subject such as global warming with resorting to some measure of hyperbole; otherwise, it would be so dry that it would be impossible for anyone other than a scientist to watch. There is nothing in the film that isn't based on sound science, but science is something that we are accustomed to speaking about quietly, lest we inadvertly exaggerate something, or perhaps oversimplify. But the fact remains that global warming research has been going on for several decades, yet until a few years ago got virtually no mention in the mainstream media and has only seeped into the public consciousness in the last few years. So sometimes it is necessary to yell and hit someone over the head to get attention.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 14 2007, 01:47 PM) [snapback]405542[/snapback]</div>

How can anyone say with a straight face that Katrina was a stronger hurricane because of global warming? Hurricanes will get more frequent? What about 2006? Did global warming just decide to give the gulf coast a breather? To say that Katrina was a result of global warming is just nonsense. What about Camille in the 60's or some of the other stronger hurricanes long before there was any talk of man-made global warming? To use Katrina as any kind of evidence about global warming makes me completely discount anything else coming out of Gore's mouth.

The same goes for the two women going to the arctic to show the effects of global warming. they were hoping to braodcast to classrooms evidence of GW, melting ice, maybe penquins in bikinis, but had to turn back because the weather was so much colder than what they had planned for. Now I have read that the terrible cold was caused by global warming? So it seems all storms, all cold all warm everything is a result of man-made global-warming?

 

Climate is the means and extremes of the most recent 30-year period (i.e., 1971-2000) including precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and net primary productivity. Weather is the current condition of the atmosphere.

What Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have brought together is a 650,000 year history of climate on Earth while pointing out the apparent increase in temperatures since 1750 CE. The fourth effort by the IPCC used 30,000 peer-reviewed published papers.

No objective, rational, thinking person confuses climate and weather or short-term vs. long-term.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(skruse @ Mar 14 2007, 02:34 PM) [snapback]405568[/snapback]</div>

Isn't that exactly what Al Gore does with the segments on Polar Bears and Hurricanes?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 14 2007, 01:56 PM) [snapback]405590[/snapback]</div>

Yep. I just remembered the images of icebergs calving off of glaciers. Oh, the horror! It's all showbiz!

BTW - Katrina helped prove that mankind can't trump Mother Nature. Build a city below sea level and surrounded by rivers and a gulf and see what eventually happens. It was a failure in planning from start to finish. Katrina was only a CAT 3 at landfall.