Pakistan: A Climate Disaster Case Study
Pakistan: A case study
What is happening in Pakistan cannot be described in a single word – like disaster or catastrophe. We are watching a combination of climate, weather, population, societal capacity, and geopolitics whose scope and ramifications are far beyond a “historic flood.”
I do not have any special insight, but I do have a special interest. My youngest sister Elizabeth is in Peshawar on the front line of the flood. She is the “friend” that Jeff Masters' referred to in his blog on August 10, 2010. (As picked up in the NYTimes.) And with this personal interest, I find myself digging around sources of local Pakistani news. What we are watching has all of the elements of climate disaster of the type that is predicted to be more common in the future. Let’s deconstruct this.
Figure 1. Image of the Pakistan flood catastrophe of 2010, courtesy of the Pakistan Meteorology Department.
Climate and climate change: The weather that has brought all of the rain to Pakistan (and India and China) is associated with the South Asian Monsoon (old big (> 10 MB) Rood presentation). This is the flow of air from the Indian Ocean into South Asia with large amounts of rain released when the air flows up the high topography that defines Central Asia. In Pakistan it is often what is called the northwest extension of the monsoon, which happens later in the season than the monsoonal flow that brings rain to South India. What is happening, and it is still going on, is an extreme event of an important and well described element of the Earth’s climate. From the point of view of meteorological measurements, this year’s rains and floods might be “historic” in the sense of being largest. I will let those who are more familiar with records argue that point; it does not really matter. (I am preempting any consideration of any relevance of the statement “but there was a big event like this in 18xx as described by, say, Charles Napier.”)
The prediction of “more extreme weather” is part of the portfolio of events associated with the predictions of global warming. Warmer ocean, warmer air, more water in the air – it still gets cold as it flows up the mountain and it rains. So the getting-to-be-old scientific hedge of “this is consistent with the predictions of global warming” is true.
Can we attribute this particular event to global warming? Probably not, but let’s think about it. One of the papers in my collection of important papers is one by P . Frich. This paper talks about indices that measure climate extremes and sets out the arguments about seeing not one isolated extreme, but a whole set of extremes. This taken in concert with changes in the average (a trend) and more and more extremes as time goes by, leads to a situation where it is extremely unlikely that all of the extreme events can just be normal chance. Look at the extreme events – first the drought and fires in Russia, perhaps the heat in the eastern U.S., add in the cool warm season in Southern California (to be replaced by extreme heat), we are seeing coherent behavior that is, again, consistent with the predictions of global warming. (See Peter Stott.)
Attribution of the 2010 monsoon and flood to “global warming” will be left to far more sophisticated arguments and time. We see here an extreme climate event, hard to ascribe this to “weather,” in a place with highly vulnerable people, in a country with low “resilience” to such an event. (What country could respond to 20% of its surface being flooded and 20,000,000 people displaced?) This type of event will occur again, whether or not this particular event is attributed to global warming. With global warming, they will occur more frequently, perhaps be more extreme. Pakistan will need to rebuild, to redevelop, to develop, and the smart redevelopment will realize that these events will happen again, and build in extra because it will happen more often.
Pakistan: I am not an expert on Pakistan. Last year my niece Claire Snell-Rood recommended a book “Empires of the Indus,” which was written by Alice Albinia. Albinia traveled up the Indus, through the area that has been flooded, and areas that will soon be flooded. Pakistan came to be in 1947 when India was partitioned, a strategy of colonial powers that never seems to work out so well. Somewhere in the background was the idea that Pakistan was Muslim and India was Hindu and there were Sikhs in the region. (“Pakistan was born in the name of religion, and baptized in the blood of those who died trying to get there.” Albinia, p4) It is a country which was immediately in war with India, with both laying claim to some land, especially Kashmir. It is a country pieced together, it a region of ancient rivalries, and religious and political conflict. My point – as a nation Pakistan has been a “nation” for little more than 60 years; it has been a place of troubled politics; there has been building and development over the past 60 years, much of which has been washed away in the last 2 weeks or will be washed away in the next few weeks. (Destroyed Infrastructure) 60 years – that’s the amount of time that we think about investing, in our retirement, in our roads, in our power plants. It’s a number that reaches out and hits some one who thinks about how to respond to climate change, how to deal with “investments” of the scale of a lifetime, how to plan for “100 year events” happening every 20 years, every 5 years? 60 years is an amount of time that we think about.
Pakistan - a country which in the best of weather is at the center of U.S. national security interests. A country with nuclear weapons. A country that cannot maintain its security interests and respond to the flood. International instability associated with an extreme climate event that has direct consequences on U.S. security. This is the situation that my students always conclude will finally get the U.S. to pay attention to climate change and environmental security. (old blog 1, old blog 2)
We have, here, harsh, brutish reality - a fragile, geopolitically important country where lives, crops, and infrastructure have been washed away. A public health nightmare will follow. (link)
We have here a case study of a climate disaster.
This is an event which will raise all of the arguments – the issues of population, and development. The fact that if we had reduced CO2 emissions 5 years ago that it probably would not have mattered. The argument from the scientific study of the Earth’s climate is that we will have more of these events; warming is already built into the system. If we reduce our emissions, then maybe we will responsibly reduce these events for our grandchildren – reduce the cost. It is imperative that we start to build adaptive capacity. In our efforts to develop and maintain and sustain our infrastructure, consider what extreme climate events will mean.
It is too early to tie up the loose ends here. We are in the middle of these events, and we are just beginning to realize the consequences. Parroting the words of Molly Kinder providing aid to Pakistan it is a moral imperative, a humanitarian imperative, and a security imperative.
Here once again are some places that Elizabeth has recommended for the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan.
Doctors Without Borders
The International Red Cross
MERLIN medical relief charity
The mobile giving service mGive allows one to text the word "SWAT" to 50555. The text will result in a $10 donation to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Pakistan Flood Relief Effort.
U.S. State Department Recommended Charities
Elizabeth says that it is better to send money to the organizations doing the relief work than to try to organize shipments of goods. It's hard to get stuff there , even if you do know how.
And here is
Faceted Search of Blogs at climateknowledge.org
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NW and NE passages open now?
TORONTO --
TORONTO (AP) One of Canada's top foreign policy priorities will be to work with other countries to resolve differences over Arctic border disputes, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Friday.
Cannon released a new Arctic policy statement that puts more emphasis on cooperation. The Conservative government has previously emphasized strengthening its military presence in the Arctic to bolster Canada's sovereignty.
Climate change is altering the Arctic geography by melting ice and creating open waterways, and with them new access to a bonanza of minerals, petroleum and polar shipping routes. This has led to a welter of conflicting claims by Canada's neighbors, including Russia.
"Making progress on outstanding boundary issues will be a top priority," Cannon said.
Russia, Canada, the U.S., and Denmark all have claims before a U.N. commission to extend their undersea boundaries into ice-blocked areas, and Moscow dramatically staked its claim to the region by planting a flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole in 2007.Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made the Arctic a priority, pledging to increase Canada's military presence in the Northwest Passage in case enough ice melts to make it a regular Atlantic-Pacific shipping lane. Canada says it owns the passage. The U.S. and others say it's international territory.
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Work on this phase began in September of 2008 and was scheduled for completion this October, but finishes slightly ahead of schedule and just in time for back-to-school traffic.
"It's still going to bottleneck at the Loop, we realize that, but it should provide additional safety and everything, especially when the Department of Transportation opens the Slide Road bridge a lot more access to this area for those Tech students that live in the area and all the other citizens that live out here," says Marsha Reed from the City of Lubbock Public Works Director.
If your travels take you along this portion of Erskine in the coming days you'll still have to contend with some orange barrels. Crews are finishing up final touches like road striping.
The next phase of the Northwest Passage includes widening the loop and adding two bridges.
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What a crock of BS. Your article states 2010 is on track to become the warmest on record. No. It might end up 2nd, but most likely 3rd in the last 30 years and probably further back if we had accurate records of the 30s. On the Arctic ice, the low point will be no where near the 2007 low and probably be higher than 2 of the last 3 years.
Does the writer have an agenda? Do you?
From Wikipedia, the author:
Thomas Homer-Dixon (born 1956 in Victoria, British Columbia) holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario, and is a Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo. He previously held the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, and was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.
There you have it, an essay by a political scientist on the science of global climate change. Pathetic.
So second and third place is fine for you?
No Michael, I am not the one full of it. Go to this site for a moment./ Link
You will quickly note that more heat records were broken during the 30s than any other decade. Your graphs are the ones based on BS and you and Dr. Rood and even Florida know it. It's pretty hard to argue with the record heat events of the 30s. There are no reliable global statistics for that period. And yes I know the figures are just from the USA, but hard to believe for a decade the USA had so much heat and the rest of the world was just so so.
The distortions that you and others post here are pathetic.
Greenland
Scroll down to view a list of all all cities.
Cities
Place Temperature Humidity Pressure Conditions Wind Updated
Aasiaat 46 °F 93% 30.01 in Fog West at 4 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Angisoq 47 °F 75% 30.13 in ESE at 10 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Aputiteeq 39 °F 73% 30.06 in South at 4 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Cape Harald Moltke
Cape Tobin 41 °F 87% 30.04 in Partly Cloudy South at 12 mph 1:50 PM EGST
Carey Island 40 °F 100% 30.12 in WNW at 7 mph 12:00 PM ADT
Daneborg 43 °F 65% 30.01 in ESE at 12 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Danmarkshavn 41 °F 66% 30.01 in SE at 1 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Hall Land 34 °F 93% 30.16 in Overcast South at 7 mph 11:00 AM MDT
Henrik Kroeyer Holme 38 °F 68% 30.01 in East at 8 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Ikermiit 44 °F 78% 30.07 in ESE at 5 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Ikermiuarsuk 51 °F 47% 29.97 in NW at 2 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Illoqqortoormiut 41 °F 79% 30.06 in West at 6 mph 3:00 PM EGST
Ilulissat 46 °F 62% 30.01 in Overcast West at 5 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Kangerlussuaq 54 °F 72% 29.98 in Mostly Cloudy SW at 8 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Kangilinnguit
Kap Morris Jesup 33 °F 94% 29.98 in West at 29 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Kitsissorsuit 44 °F 100% 30.05 in SSE at 13 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Kitsissut 52 °F 82% 29.98 in Mostly Cloudy SE at 5 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Kulusuk 48 °F 76% 30.06 in Partly Cloudy SW at 13 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Maniitsoq 46 °F 100% 30.01 in Mostly Cloudy SE at 9 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Mittarfik Nuuk 48 °F 93% 30.04 in Light Drizzle SSW at 12 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Narsarsuaq 52 °F 67% 30.09 in Mostly Cloudy West at 7 mph 1:50 PM WGST
Navy Operated
Nerlerit Inaat 41 °F 87% 30.04 in Partly Cloudy South at 12 mph 1:50 PM EGST
Nunarsuit 42 °F 99% 30.02 in South at 6 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Nuuk 48 °F 93% 30.04 in Light Drizzle SSW at 12 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Nuussuaataa 50 °F 66% 30.01 in Mostly Cloudy East at 10 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Paamiut 45 °F 82% 30.12 in Mostly Cloudy SSW at 8 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Pituffik 47 °F 83% 30.06 in Clear WSW at 5 mph 1:55 PM ADT
Prins Christian Sund 48 °F 68% 30.11 in Scattered Clouds East at 6 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Qaanaaq
Qaarsut 50 °F 66% 30.01 in Mostly Cloudy East at 10 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Qaqortoq 52 °F 67% 30.09 in Mostly Cloudy West at 7 mph 1:50 PM WGST
Sioralik 46 °F 100% 30.01 in Mostly Cloudy SE at 9 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Sisimiut 52 °F 82% 29.98 in Mostly Cloudy SE at 5 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Sisimiut Mittarfia 52 °F 82% 29.98 in Mostly Cloudy SE at 5 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Station Nord 41 °F 65% 30.01 in East at 12 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Station Nord
Summit 18 °F 62% in ENE at 2 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Tasiilaq 48 °F 76% 30.06 in Partly Cloudy SW at 13 mph 2:50 PM WGST
Ukiivik 46 °F 98% 30.11 in South at 4 mph 1:00 PM WGST
Upernavik 46 °F 100% 30.04 in Light Rain Variable at 4 mph 2:50 PM WGST
August 17, 2010
North by Northwest
The end of summer is approaching in the Arctic; temperatures are dropping and melt is ending in the high latitudes. Yet summer is not quite over in the lower latitudes of the Arctic Ocean, where sea ice extent continues to decline. Sea ice has melted out extensively in the northern route of the Northwest Passage, but the passage is not completely open.
Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, sea ice extent continues to be well above normal, largely because of atmospheric circulation patterns set up by a high Antarctic Oscillation mode.
Overview of conditions
As of August 16, 2010, Arctic ice extent was 5.95 million square kilometers (2.30 million square miles),1.68 million square kilometers (649,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.
Conditions in context
As of August 16, only 2007 and 2008 had lower extent. Approximately one month remains in the melt season.
High pressure has moved in over the central Arctic Ocean, replacing stormier, lower-pressure conditions that persisted during July. Paired with lower pressure on the Siberian side, this pattern generates winds that push the ice northward and reduce the total ice extent, especially since much of the ice pack is spread out.
Figure 3. Top: This image, from the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-2 satellite, shows the northern route of the Northwest Passage this August; although the passage is not completely open, sea ice cover is light. Bright, circular and other sharply defined shapes are sea ice; dark grey indicates calm ocean; white smudged regions are areas of ocean that have been roughened by winds. Bottom: The graph of ice area in the northern route of the Northwest Passage shows that ice retreated earlier than normal. The blue line tracks the area of sea ice for 2010, compared to average and to previous low ice years.
Credit: NSIDC courtesy Howell, Agnew, Wohlleben, and the Canadian Ice Service
High-resolution image
Early clearing in the Northwest Passage
Stephen Howell, Tom Agnew, and Trudy Wohlleben from Environment Canada report that sea ice conditions in the Northwest Passage are very light. Ice is still present at the mouth of the MClure Strait, in central Viscount-Melville Sound, and in Larsen Sound, as of early August. As a result, neither the northern route (Western Parry Channel) nor the southern route (Amundsen Passage) through the Northwest Passage are completely clear of ice. Sea ice area within the northern route is currently well below the 1968 to 2000 average and almost a month ahead of the clearing that was observed in 2007, according to ice chart data from the Canadian Ice Service. In the southern route, there is still a substantial amount of ice.
This years early clearing of sea ice probably resulted from record warm temperatures this past spring over the Western Canadian Arctic, as well as the decline in older, multiyear ice in the channel over recent years. Spring 2010 was the warmest in the region since 1948: some regions of the Western Canadian Arctic were more than 6C(11F) above normal. These warm conditions helped break the ice up early in the northern route. If winds push sea ice away from the entrance to MClure Strait, the northern route of the Northwest Passage could open completely this year. However, even scattered sea ice remains a significant threat to navigation.
History of the Northwest Passage
Conditions in the Northwest Passage are quite variable and do not necessarily reflect overall conditions in the Arctic. However, todays conditions in the Northwest Passage would likely astonish 19th century explorers such as McClure, Franklin, and Amundsen. In upcoming decades, the passage will be increasingly likely to open during summer.
Last month, Canadian investigators located the wreckage of the HMS Investigator, which sank on an expedition led by Captain Robert McClure in the 1850s. The McClure expedition had set out to rescue the Franklin Expedition, which had gone missing after leaving Baffin Bay for the Northwest Passage in 1845. McClure attempted to enter the passage from the west through what is now called MClure Strait, but quickly became trapped in the ice. They remained trapped through two winters before being rescued by another ship. The Franklin Expedition was not so fortunate: all 128 men perished. It was another fifty years before Norwegian Roald Amundsen and a small crew successfully navigated the passage. Their trek, by the southern route, took over two years.
Figure 5. This image shows melt onset anomalies in the Arctic Ocean for 2010, compared to the 1979 to 2000 average. Green, red, and yellow indicate areas of earlier melt onset, while blue and violet show regions of later melt onset. White and black indicate regions with no data.
Credit: NSIDC courtesy Thorsten Markus, NASA GSFC/data from DMSP SSM/I and NASA AMSR-E
High-resolution image
Melt onset
Despite a late spurt in ice growth this past winter, air temperatures remained higher than normal during spring and early summer, leading to an early melt onset over parts of the Arctic Ocean, though onset was later in other areas. Compared to the 1979 to 2000 average onset date, melt began one to two weeks earlier in the eastern Arctic. The central Arctic melt onset date was about average. In contrast, melt started about a week later than average in the western Arctic, including the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian seas, and in the Bering Sea, one of the regions that experienced a surge in ice growth late in the winter.
Recent work by Thorsten Markus at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center shows that date of melt onset got steadily earlier from 1979 to 2008, in all regions of the Arctic except for the Sea of Okhotsk. Although this year showed some areas of later melt onset, compared to normal, the overall trend remains towards earlier melt. The largest trend is in the Barents Sea, where ice melt has begun about seven days earlier each decade since 1979.
Link
ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2010) — Largely as a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for energy and land-use changes such deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now higher that it has been at any time over the last 800,000 years. Most scientists believe this increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be an important cause of global warming.
both the peak year of emissions and post-peak reduction rates influence how much ocean acidity increases by 2100. Changes in ocean pH over subsequent centuries will depend on how much the rate of carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced in the longer term.
Largely as a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for energy and land-use changes such deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now higher that it has been at any time over the last 800,000 years. Most scientists believe this increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be an important cause of global warming.
“The oceans absorb around a third of carbon dioxide emissions, which helps limit global warming, but uptake of carbon dioxide by the oceans also increases their acidity, with potentially harmful effects on calcifying organisms such as corals and the ecosystems that they support,” explained Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
“Increased ocean acidification is also likely to affect the biogeochemistry of the oceans in ways that we do not as yet fully understand,” he added.
It is widely recognised that carbon emissions need to be brought under control if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided, but how quickly and to what extent would such mitigation measures ameliorate ocean acidification?
To address these questions, Tyrrell and his colleagues, in collaboration with researchers at the Met Office, used
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1301713/The-crack-roof-world-Yes-global-warming-real- -deeply-worrying.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0xSU3XsVD
Around me is an endless expanse of searing white beneath an unmarked blue August sky. In front of me is a roaring, angry river of the richest, brilliant turquoise, churning at 20 knots through a crystal gorge fringed with icicles.
This river runs deep, possibly 13ft. Not a speck of dust, mud, weed or debris pollutes its flawless, azure depths.
Despite being only 100ft across, this mighty channel carries more water than the Thames, and if I fell in I would have about 20 seconds to live. It's not the cold that would kill me. Long before I had time to succumb to hypothermia I would disappear into a gaping, hellish maw - one of the deadly, awesome plugholes which punctuate the Greenlandic ice sheet.
Incredibly, this vertical shaft - called a moulin (French for mill) - manages to swallow this entire river into oblivion, the water plunging a third of a mile towards the base of the icecap. It is an astounding sight, one of the most dramatic spectacles on the planet - about a quarter of a million gallons-a-second simply vanishing from view.
We are high on the great ice sheet, which covers 90 per cent of this vast Arctic island, and I am accompanying a British science team investigating the dramatic increase in summer melt waters seen in the past decade.
They are here because this may well be Global Warming Ground Zero - the sharp end of climate change.
For many people, what I am looking at is the beginning of the end
Greenland, they say, is literally cracking up; just last week, while I was on the island, a chunk of ice the size of West London fell off it into the Arctic ocean.
Sceptics, of course, maintain that the scene before me is just the result of the natural fluctuations which affect the world's weather. Either way, it is utterly beautiful.
I have long been something of a climate
Because while across most of the world evidence for current climate change is often inconclusive and anecdotal, the huge ice sheet which sits atop this, the largest island in the world, appears to be cracking up before our eyes. And on a timescale of decades rather than the millennia many predicted.
Just five days ago, a 'superberg', measuring 100sq miles broke off the Petermann Glacier in the north-west of the island and floated into the ocean - the largest chunk of ice to break off Greenland for nearly half a century.
'I used to be a sceptic about Greenland melting,' says Dr Alun Hubbard, my host and Britain's leading glaciologist studying Greenland, 'but now I'm keeping an open mind.'
Dr Hubbard and his team have been working 20-hour days for the past two months in a frantic effort to find out as much about the shifting icecap as possible before the winter deep-freeze sets in. The statistics are mind-boggling and paint a picture of a world changing month-by-month.
The Greenland ice sheet covers an area of 667,000 sq miles - seven times the size of Britain, and at its centre it is two miles thick. After Antarctica, this is the greatest single chunk of frozen water on Earth, constituting 10 per cent of all the fresh water on the planet. It has existed for
For it is Greenland which has seen perhaps the most extreme temperature rises on Earth in the past few decades. Satellite measurements from space, and fieldwork on the ground, have shown that the Greenlandic ice is melting at a rate 30 per cent higher than 40 years ago.
Since 1970, southern Greenland has warmed by 3C (in Britain we have seen a rather inconclusive quarter to a half of a degree increase in that time).
The changes are becoming evident on the ground; my face is still red from a couple of hours' sitting in the sun in Kangerlussuaq, the tiny airport hamlet down on the west coast. Temperatures there hit an unheard-of 20C on May day this year. Up on the ice it is colder, but still warm enough, at midday, to walk around in a thin fleece.
All this means that Greenland is losing, net, about 267 billion tons of ice a year. This adds to the volume of the world's ocean, and melting Greenlandic ice is thought to be contributing about a millimetre of sea level rise every two years.
That is now; if the melt
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First of all Greenland has about 600,000 cubic miles of ice.
A cubic mile of ice is 45.97 billion tons of water
The ice sheet, according to the article is losing 267 billion tons a year.
I divided and found that Greenland is losing about 5.8 cubic miles of ice per year. So to lose ,say 3%, of the ice sheet, about 1,800 cubic miles, will take about 310 years.
Seems like we've talked about this before.
What gets me about the article is that you'd think this guy had never seen a river that comes from melting glaciers. I'm pretty sure that some of the rivers that flow out of the Himalayas carry much much more water than the river he described. I saw a show on PBS about guys trying to kayak down one of those really big wild ones. You'd think all the water in the world ran down that river in a couple of minutes, but you'd be wrong about that.
I think this guy is wrong about how dire things are in Greenland. I suspect that the glaciers go up and go down all the time.
Also, you shouldn't be posting stuff some reporter is saying because it might upset Florida who only thinks we should talk pure science like my calculation above.
Having said this, I believe the evidence exists that shows a significant climate warming across the planet. Glacial melt, glacial cores, and tree ring comparisons all point towards an increase in CO2 and and increase in temperature. This is good science at its heart being twisted by politicians with an agenda. The heart of their agenda is not to prevent the warming from happening but rather to profit from it.
Here are real scientific questions that need to be addressed BEFORE we start denigrating coal-fired power plants in climate blogs.
Is there a proven direct relationship between CO2 levels at altitude and surface temperatures? The "Greenhouse Effect Theory" is difficult to prove on a global scale. Space weather effects need to be quantified before the effects of greenhouse gases can be isolated. Variations in the sun's output will need to be accounted for in any proof of this theory. Additionally, since there are multiple gases, what is the net effect of each one? I've seen statements made that methane has 10X the greenhouse effect that CO2 does. Where is the scientific proof behind this statement?
The next important question everyone seems to miss is "Is global warming truly a bad thing?" It seems a foregone conclusion that melting glaciers is a cataclysmic thing. Melting glaciers provide more freshwater don't they? How is this a bad thing? Why is it only the negatives of a warmer planet get any press? Longer growing seasons, more airborne moisture for irrigation and power, more arable land for farming. These are just some of the possible upsides to global warming. But again, where is the science that says a warmer planet is not beneficial to humans?
There are several other questions I will throw out if someone can at least debate these few.
"A sceptic questions the pillars of reality. A heretic cuts them open to see if they bleed."
SSIGG is correct about one cubic mile of ice weighing just over four billion tons. However, 3% of the 600,000 cubic mile figure for the Greenland Ice sheet volume is 18,000 cubic miles, not 1800, so the end result is not far off (LOL, in this case two wrongs DO make a right).
Of course the second point is the assumption that the melt rate will remain constant--or in SSIGG's case, that it will increase exponentially. I believe that any predictions of the melt rate extending out 100 years is highly speculative.
Hello, Gotlieb. I consider myself to be an AGW skeptic. I'm less than optimistic that your questions will lead to much of a genuine discussion; but nevertheless, I will start by responding to them myself.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that warming has occurred over the last hundred years. I agree that the historical temperature record is problematic, although I think it is possible to identify general warming and cooling trends over the last century. I also believe that man-made emissions have significantly contributed to CO₂ increases over the past century. I am skeptical that the increases in CO₂ have been the primary driver behind the warming of the last century, as well that future CO₂ increases will result in temperatures expected by AGW proponents. The latter depends on climate feedbacks that are highly uncertain.
The last question--Is global warming a bad thing?--is very interesting as well. The point of view of some AGW-proponents is that since we can't be sure of what specifically a warmer world will mean to all locations, that it isn't worth the risk to find out. While I think in general that a warmer world is always better for mankind than a cooler one--I would generally agree with this point of view. However, I am not convinced that a significant amount of the past century's warming cannot be explained by natural means. I also doubt that there are any reasonable measures that can be taken to reduce CO₂ levels currently, although I think a transition away from fossil fuels will occur gradually anyway which will in turn eventually limit CO₂ levels.
"Can we attribute this particular event to global warming? ... One of the papers in my collection of important papers is one by P . Frich. This paper talks about indices that measure climate extremes and sets out the arguments about seeing not one isolated extreme, but a whole set of extremes. "
Of course you can't attribute this to global warming any more than the record snows of last winter in the Eastern USA.
The "important paper" by Frich says nothing substantial about global extremes and is full of flaws and very suspect conclusions. Partial quick list...
...no mention of Urban heat island which would contribute or explain many of the "conclusions"
...the article conveniently ignores cold as an extreme...LOL
...the data was carefully selected by humans for use in the study, not objectively screened
...study found no change in heat wave duration despite the warmer global temps
...study found less frost and longer growing seasons. That's scary.
...the study found slightly more rainy days and fewer droughts.
If this paper is "important", it doesn't say much except that the earth is a bit warmer and a bit wetter than it used to be...but we already knew that. A bit warmer and a bit wetter are not "extremes".
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