How Global Warming Research is Creating a Climate of Fear - PhillyBlog

tmcgee · #1 (**permalink**) 02-22-2005, 10:05 PM

Nice, reasonably balanced piece in Der Spiegel, of all places:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/inte...342376,00.html

Quote:

The scientific community does in fact face a serious problem when it comes to public understanding and perception of climate change. Scientific research faces a crisis because its public figures are overselling the issues to gain attention in a hotly contested market for newsworthy information.

Warning, terrifying picture of a German in a bathing suit included; viewer discretion is advised.

tmcgee

mikeg · #2 (**permalink**) 02-23-2005, 03:10 AM

Very funny article you cited, especially in light of the correlation b/t the supposed fear-mongering of the scientists and that of the current American administration when it comes to threats by our enemies.

Quote:

...Always choose the most dramatic figure

The pattern is always the same. The significance of individual events is turned into material suitable for media presentation and is then cleverly dramatized. When the outlook for the future is discussed, the scenario that predicts the highest growth rates for greenhouse gas emissions -- which, of course, comes with the most dramatic climatic consequences -- is always selected from among all possible scenarios. Those predicting significantly smaller increases in greenhouse gas levels are not mentioned.

Funny they make such an extreme statement that is so patently false.

I take the view that there is something to be afraid of. How can you pump all of the gases and pollution into the air that humans have been and have no impact? There was a piece on this yesterday in the Philly Inquirer:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/ent...t/10953667.htm

Quote:

Posted on Mon, Feb. 21, 2005

Ocean data show extent of global warming

By Seth Borenstein

K NIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON - New measurements from the world's oceans, announced last week, give the most compelling evidence yet that man-made global warming is under way and hint at a more dramatic and sudden climate change - both cooling and warming - in the future.

Two sets of ocean readings presented at the annual meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advance of Science solidify the scientific underpinnings of global warming and point to an increased chance for a much-feared side effect that was popularized and fictionalized in last year's movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which global warming triggers a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere.

"The debate is no longer whether there is a global warming signal," said Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who analyzed nine million ocean-temperature and salinity readings. "The debate is what are we going to do about it."

The new data show that the world's oceans have heated up just as predicted in global-warming computer models, and, more ominously, that massive amounts of fresh water from melting Arctic ice are seeping into the Atlantic Ocean, threatening to trigger a climate crisis.

What scientists have found could cause parts of the eastern United States to cool by several degrees, according to new calculations announced by Ruth Curry, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The same worst-case Day After Tomorrow-type scenario is one that a 2003 Pentagon analysis said "would challenge United States' national security in ways that should be considered immediately." A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study worried about it, too.

Curry found that between 1965 and 1995, about 4,800 cubic miles of fresh water - more water than is in Lake Superior, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Lake Huron combined - melted from the Arctic region and poured into the normally salty northern Atlantic.

If it continues, the increased influx of fresh water eventually could shut down the great ocean conveyor belt, which helps regulate air and water temperatures, abruptly changing the climate around the Atlantic and elsewhere.

The conveyor belt, which is a system of currents, moves water in multiple directions from the Greenland coast all the way to Australia and back. It depends on heavier saltwater's sinking to pull warm water from the tropics to higher latitudes.

Climate scientists fear that if polar ice continues to melt, the resulting lower salinity in the Atlantic would shut down the conveyor belt, something that happened once about 8,200 years ago, Curry said.

Early calculations show that it would take an additional 4,300 cubic miles of fresh water from the Arctic to trigger a shutdown of the conveyor belt, Curry said.

If the thaw continues at current rates, the shutdown scenario would occur in about two decades. What's worrisome, Curry said, is that the Greenland ice, which hadn't been melting with the rest of the Arctic, is starting to thaw.

"We are taking the first steps" toward this scenario, Curry said in a news conference. "The system is moving in that direction."

Curry said abrupt climate change was just "possible" but not necessarily likely.

While Curry was speculating on the future, the new ocean data from Scripps reveal how global warming already has changed the Earth.

Seven million temperature readings and two million salinity readings collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created the best "fingerprint" of man-made global warming ever, Scripps' Barnett said.

From 1969 to 1999, surface ocean temperatures rose about two-thirds of a degree Fahrenheit, while temperatures hundreds of feet deeper hadn't warmed as much. The readings are nearly exactly what computer models of global warming say they should be, Barnett said.

If the global warming were the result of natural variability or increased sun activity, the temperature and salinity changes would be very different from the ones seen in the NOAA data, Barnett said.

"The evidence really is overwhelming," Barnett said.

tmcgee · #3 (**permalink**) 02-23-2005, 07:52 AM

Geez, nobody ever reads my articles. :? I mean, if you had, you'd have found out that the scientists who wrote it firmly believe the phenomenon exists -- just that the effects are overstated. Which the article you tossed on screen seems a prime example of. Although I did enjoy this classic piece of hedging, buried deep in the piece:

Quote:

Curry said abrupt climate change was just "possible" but not necessarily likely.

I read somewhere that even if every country in the world joined Kyoto (not likely) and followed it's guidelines strictly (even less likely) you'd only slightly forestall the inevitable increase ..... that's coming in a hundred years or so.

tmcgee

Alan Smithee · #4 (**permalink**) 02-23-2005, 05:49 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/h...ing/html/1.stm

chrissayer · #5 (**permalink**) 02-23-2005, 06:47 PM

The interesting thing about the changes in the salinity in the North Atlantic is that a cessation of the ocean currents (heat conveyors) would throw us not into a warming, but into a renewal of the Ice Age.

Anyone know whether the Gulf Stream and the other currents can would be restarted as a result of a refreezing of the glaciers.?

Ezra · #6 (**permalink**) 02-25-2005, 09:20 AM

Whether you think we're all going to die ala Day After Tomorrow or not, you can not deny that humans have **** on their home. And there is no sign of a slowdown.

Here is my trusted source..

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/feature1/

There's no question that the Earth is getting hotter—and fast. The real questions are: How much of the warming is our fault, and are we willing to slow the meltdown by curbing our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels?

Global warming can seem too remote to worry about, or too uncertain—something projected by the same computer techniques that often can't get next week's weather right. On a raw winter day you might think that a few degrees of warming wouldn't be such a bad thing anyway. And no doubt about it: Warnings about climate change can sound like an environmentalist scare tactic, meant to force us out of our cars and cramp our lifestyles.

Comforting thoughts, perhaps. But turn to "GeoSigns," the first chapter in our report on the changing planet. The Earth has some unsettling news.

From Alaska to the snowy peaks of the Andes the world is heating up right now, and fast. Globally, the temperature is up 1°F (.5°C) over the past century, but some of the coldest, most remote spots have warmed much more. The results aren't pretty. Ice is melting, rivers are running dry, and coasts are eroding, threatening communities. Flora and fauna are feeling the heat too, as you'll read in "EcoSigns." These aren't projections; they are facts on the ground.

The changes are happening largely out of sight. But they shouldn't be out of mind, because they are omens of what's in store for the rest of the planet.

Wait a minute, some doubters say. Climate is notoriously fickle. A thousand years ago Europe was balmy and wine grapes grew in England; by 400 years ago the climate had turned chilly and the Thames froze repeatedly. Maybe the current warming is another natural vagary, just a passing thing?

Don't bet on it, say climate experts. Sure, the natural rhythms of climate might explain a few of the warming signs you'll read about in the following pages. But something else is driving the planet-wide fever.

For centuries we've been clearing forests and burning coal, oil, and gas, pouring carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere faster than plants and oceans can soak them up (see "The Case of the Missing Carbon," February 2004). The atmosphere's level of carbon dioxide now is higher than it has been for hundreds of thousands of years. "We're now geological agents, capable of affecting the processes that determine climate," says George Philander, a climate expert at Princeton University. In effect, we're piling extra blankets on our planet.

Human activity almost certainly drove most of the past century's warming, a landmark report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared in 2001. Global temperatures are shooting up faster than at any other time in the past thousand years. And climate models show that natural forces, such as volcanic eruptions and the slow flickers of the sun, can't explain all that warming.

As carbon dioxide continues to rise, so will the mercury—another 3°F to 10°F (1.6°C to 5.5°C) by the end of the century, the IPCC projects. But the warming may not be gradual. The records of ancient climate described in "TimeSigns" suggest that the planet has a sticky thermostat. Some experts fear today's temperature rise could accelerate into a devastating climate lurch. Continuing to fiddle with the global thermostat, says Philander, "is just not a wise thing to do."

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.