Nitrogen-based fertilizers spur greenhouse gas emissions by stimulating microbes in the soil to produce more nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas, behind only carbon dioxide and methane, and also destroys stratospheric ozone. Agriculture accounts for around 80 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions worldwide, which have increased substantially in recent years, primarily due to increased nitrogen fertilizer use.” Source.
Study: A compromise to break the climate impasse Abstract - "To overcome the current impasse in global climate negotiations we propose a compromise for sharing the remaining carbon budget, based on four elements. First, limiting initial action to the Major Economies Forum members would streamline negotiations greatly. Second, using consumption-based carbon accounting would overcome important fairness concerns of key developing countries. Similarly, applying equity principles of responsibility and capability to apportion the burden of emissions reductions within the group can address concerns of both the global north and south. And fourth, promptly bringing this compromise back to the United Nations negotiations for wider adoption will be critical. Based on an indicative carbon budget of 420 gigatonnes carbon dioxide over the period 2012–2050, our analysis shows that ambitious but feasible emissions reductions will be needed, with sharp differences by world economic groups. The compromise offers effectiveness, feasibility and fairness."
Study: Effect of the Type of Bean, Processing, and Geographical Location on the Biodiesel Produced from Waste Coffee Grounds "The researchers suggest that while coffee biodiesel would be a relatively minor part of the energy mix, it could be produced on a small scale by coffee shop chains to fuel vehicles used for deliveries. These same delivery vehicles could be used to collect spent coffee grinds and take them to a central biodiesel production facility to be processed. Companies such as London-based bio-bean already produce biodiesel and biomass pellets from waste coffee grounds." Source.
On Wednesday, four former Republican Environmental Protection Agency administrators testified before Congress in an attempt to convince current Congressional Republicans on the threat of climate change. On last night's episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart explained why that won't work.
"People are always complaining that the Republican party ignores so-called climate change science, but there's a reason why they refuse to listen to alarmists," Stewart said. "Republicans aren't going to fall for liberal lies anymore, which is why [Wednesday] they finally got to hear the facts from some of their own."
So maybe, Stewart hoped, Republicans in Congress will listen to their own party. EPA chiefs from past Republican administrations went before Congress: "Nixon, double Bush, the great Reagan himself, blessed be thy name," Stewart quipped. "You know that people who worked for those titans of history are going to give us the straight dope. Listen up, tree-huggers."
Yet the EPA heads argued for action on climate change. "Climate change warnings and EPA empowerment coming from actual Republicans?" Stewart asked. "That's like being told pizza causes cancer by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
There is really only one solution to get Republicans to do something about climate change.
"Barack Obama must become a global warming denier."
New study raises level of concern about methane emissions from abandoned gas and oil wells.
The methane emissions from fracked shale reservoir production are believed to be even more damaging from a global warming perspective, using a well-to-well comparison with gas and oil production from sites where fracking is not used.
Leaks from abandoned gas and oil wells are not currently factored into the EPA's carbon budget calculations.
"Add in [another] recent study published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences that found [that] the EPA underestimated methane emissions from active drilling sites by up to 1,000 times, and earlier doubts that a transition to fracked natural gas will significantly slow rates of global warming seem [to be] well-founded."
"Uncontrolled build-up of methane in the atmosphere is naturally checked – although human influence can upset this natural regulation – by methane's reaction with hydroxyl radicals formed from singlet oxygen atoms and with water vapor. Methane has a net lifetime of about 10 years [in the atmosphere] and is primarily removed by conversion to carbon dioxide and water.
Methane also affects the degradation of the ozone layer."
From a global warming perspective, what I "get" here is that methane emissions derived from fossil fuel powered industry and transport, along with methane emissions from agriculture, could be at least as damaging on a molecule by molecule basis, as anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
What I don't know (because I am not a scientist, merely stayed at a Holiday Inn) is the percentage of airborne methane molecules that are converted by natural processes into airborne carbon dioxide molecules.
That would seem to be a significant consideration in terms of quantifying the total anthropogenic greenhouse contribution to global warming.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-22-2014).]
Originally posted by 2.5: With prompt and aggressive limits on CO2 emissions, where will we be? Could you make a chart showing that?
This is a table from the most recent report (October, 2013) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It is a representation of four different scenarios for global human greenhouse gas emissions and how they play out during the remainder of this century, in terms of Global Mean Surface Air Temperature Change and Global Mean Sea Level Rise.
The numbers are the output from a computer (software) simulation of the earth's climate system.
Temperature Change is presented in degrees Celsius (or centigrade), relative to a zero or baseline temperature that is derived from temperature data over the period from 1986 to 2005. Sea Level Rise is presented in meters, relative (again) to a zero or baseline sea level that is derived from sea level data over the same period (1986 to 2005).
My understanding of these emissions scenarios goes like this :
RCP2.6 is an insanely optimistic scenario, with unimaginably large and rapid reductions in global human greenhouse gas emissions.
RCP4.5 is just short of insanely optimistic. A combination of very aggressive reduction strategies that all work out to near perfection.
RCP6.0 is still aggressive, but more realistic than RCP4.5 in terms of what is likely to win global acceptance, and more realistic in terms of actual vs. anticipated greenhouse reductions, considering how each one of a portfolio of various reduction strategies is likely to work out in practice.
RCP8.5 is "Business As Usual". The already highly developed nations achieve only small reductions in their per capita greenhouse emissions, and the other nations around the world become very much like the highly developed nations are now in terms of emissions profiles, as they continue to grow their populations and attempt to improve their standards of living during the remainder of the current century.
Assuming RCP6.0, which I think is the most palatable scenario (overall), the planet is likely to see its "global temperature" increase by somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. That is likely more than the 2 C target that was set many years ago with the idea that if it could be capped at that level of +2 C by 2100, global civilization in 2100 would not be perceiving it as (figuratively) "a roundhouse kick directly to the groin". So this data makes me think that our descendants of 2100 will definitely be "feeling the heat", but not all the way to the edge of imminent, large scale human population reductions caused by food shortages or resource wars and other climate related impacts.
Assuming RCP6.0, Sea Level Rise is about 0.5 meters by 2100. If anyone wants to use an interactive map to consider what that would be like, here's a suggestion :
The map can be zoomed to any of the U.S. States and Territories, except for Alaska.
There is a slide bar over on the left to set Sea Level Rise. It can only be set to the levels of 0 (current), +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 and +6 feet. To bracket on 0.5 meters, would be +1 or +2 feet; that is as close as it can be set. "Click" on that question mark icon next to "Sea Level Rise" to view more information about how this interactive map function works and what can be explored.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-22-2014).]
Thanks. I really dont have a lot to say about it. Just interesting to see some scenarios. I havent read the huge document. My curiosity was mainly compared to the natural temp rises. Your post said "Temperature Change is presented in degrees Celsius (or centigrade), relative to a zero or baseline temperature that is derived from temperature data over the period from 1986 to 2005." So would this then mean about 1.5 degrees per 100 years is what they would say earth naturally will heat by if it were possible to live like cave men? (In that case probably not using wood as a heat source tho) Or are they saying the RCP2.6 scenario is about 1.5 degrees higher than the normal increase (whatever that would be) by 2100?
Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading. http://www.thegwpf.org/arct...riod-global-cooling/
Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading. http://www.thegwpf.org/arct...riod-global-cooling/
Quote from article:
"Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, was one of the first to investigate the ocean cycles. He said: ‘We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”
This is the only person the article references that predicts "a cooling trend", which doesn't mean "global cooling". Either way, global temperatures are at record highs in 2014 so far, so pretty sure he's wrong.
Here's a fun fact. The GWPF director, Benny Peiser, responded to predictions in 2009 with the following.
"The predictions come in thick and fast, but we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it's very cold, it doesn't seem to be warming."
Sounds like this guy is really rigorous in his research. Looks out the window and its cold!
Global warming data has been manipulated to grossly misrepresent warming trends, and scientists have suppressed climate records indicating that the 1930s was the hottest decade on record in the United States, says U.K. journalist Christopher Booker.
"When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data," Booker, author of "The Real Global Warming Disaster," wrote in a column for The Sunday Telegraph of London.
Booker said that while he found evidence of fiddled climate figures while writing his book seven years ago, Steven Goddard's blog "Real Science" has uncovered another example of it when looking at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's graph of U.S. surface temperatures.
The group, Goddard claims, has been "adjusting" its records by replacing real temperatures with data "fabricated" by computer models. The effect has been to make earlier periods seem cooler, while more recent temperatures have been inaccurately presented as higher to give the impression that the Earth has been warming much more than the actual data suggests.
Using actual temperatures, graphs indicate that the United States has been cooling since the '30s, Goddard has shown, according to Booker, even though the official graphs are showing that the the Earth has been warming at a rate equal to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.
"When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous 'hockey stick' graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years," Booker wrote.
"Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology."
Suppose it were possible to reexamine all of the relevant science in a way that would completely discredit the heat budget and temperature related findings of the IPCC: that human activities are the main cause of an ongoing, rapid and dangerous global warming that could still be significantly mitigated by global reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. What then? Can we also with good conscience, as the planet's ostensibly most civilized species, disregard the indications of trouble all around us in the waters, as more CO2 from fossil fuels is taken up by oceans and lakes and further alters the natural chemistry and biology of marine and freshwater ecosystems?
There's more at stake than some of av1's close descendants going to McDonald's before the end of the current century and discovering that Filet-O-Fish is not on the menu.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-27-2014).]
A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact. ... To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.
The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.
Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.
He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.
Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.
"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."
Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming. ... Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.
"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said.
A leaked report by a United Nations’ group dedicated to climate studies says that heat from the sun may play a larger role than previously thought.
“[Results] do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate,” reads a draft copy of a major, upcoming report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Some skeptical climatologists say that the statement in the U.N. draft report is important, but not game-changing.
“The solar component is real but not of sufficient magnitude to have driven most of the warming of the late 20th century,” Pat Michaels, the former president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and current director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, told FoxNews.com.
The U.N. report also says that the effect of solar activity will be “much smaller than the warming expected from increases in [man-made] greenhouse gases.”
An estimate from NASA said that solar variations caused 25 percent of the 1.1 degree Fahrenheit warming that has been observed over the past century.
But Michaels said that if the U.N. increases its estimates about how much the sun affects Earth’s temperatures, it might help the U.N. get its prediction models back on track. While the Earth warmed over the last two decades, it did so more slowly than the U.N. had predicted.
“Climate science has the problem of trying to explain why we are now in our 17th year without a significant warming trend. As a result, you are seeing many forecasts of warming for this century being ratcheted down,” he said.
Others say that the focus on solar activity distracts from the big picture -- the fact that the Earth is warming.
“I see climate contrarians try this trick almost every time a big new solar study comes out. They somehow tend to neglect mentioning that solar variation is smaller than the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide,” Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists told FoxNews.com.
To back that up, Huertas points to data that show that solar activity and temperature rose together from 1880 until 1960, but that then, solar activity stopped increasing -- even as temperatures continued going up.
“The basic evidence is that solar activity has varied a bit while global temperature keeps going up,” Huertas said.
But Rawls said that while solar activity has indeed stopped increasing, the important thing is that it remains at a historically high level.
“The simplest way to put it is: If you put a pot on the stove at the maximum temperature, and leave it on at that temperature -- are you telling me that the pot won’t keep warming?” ...
The sea ice coverage around Antarctica over the weekend marked a record high, with the ice surrounding the continent measuring at 2.07 million square kilometers, according to an environmentalist and author who says the ice there has actually been increasing since 1979 despite continued warnings of global warming.
The new record was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s online record, The Cryosphere Today, early Sunday morning.
It's not apparent if the record actually occurred on Friday or Saturday, says Harold Ambler on his blog, Talking About the Weather.
Ambler is a journalist and author of the book "Don't Sell Your Coat: Surprising Truths About Climate Change."
"The previous record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice area was 1.840 million square kilometers and occurred on December 20, 2007," said Ambler. Meanwhile, he pointed out, global sea ice area on Sunday was standing at 0.991 million square kilometers above average, a figure he arrived at by adding anomalies for the North and South hemispheres.
While early models predicted the sea ice would decrease because of global warming, other models are showing that the opposite is happening around Antarctica, where sea ice growth is increasing.
"A freshening of the waters surrounding the southernmost continent as well as the strengthening of the winds circling it were both theorized as explanations for the steady growth of Antarctica’s sea ice during the period of satellite measurement," said Ambler.
However, he pointed out that climatologists have discounted the importance and growth of the Antarctic sea ice.
According to Walt Meier, formerly of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and currently of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, most of the Antarctic sea ice does not survive between years, and it's less significant to the Earth's climate than is the ice around the Arctic.
Meanwhile, Ambler said that the growth of the Antarctic sea ice is providing "a public relations problem, at a minimum, for those warning of global warming’s menace."
During the past 18 months, global sea ice "has seen its most robust 18-month period of the last 13 years, maintaining, on average, a positive anomaly for an 18-month period for the first time since 2001," he wrote.
In addition, Ambler said, the South Pole's temperature has been dropping over the past 40 years.
I just read yesterday that 1540 was a catastrophically hot and dry year in Europe leading to famine, disease and conflict.
quote
The heat waves of 2003 in Western Europe and 2010 in Russia, commonly labelled as rare climatic anomalies outside of previous experience, are often taken as harbingers of more frequent extremes in the global warming-influenced future. However, a recent reconstruction of spring–summer temperatures for WE resulted in the likelihood of significantly higher temperatures in 1540. In order to check the plausibility of this result we investigated the severity of the 1540 drought by putting forward the argument of the known soil desiccation-temperature feedback. Based on more than 300 first-hand documentary weather report sources originating from an area of 2 to 3 million km2, we show that Europe was affected by an unprecedented 11-month-long Megadrought. The estimated number of precipitation days and precipitation amount for Central and Western Europe in 1540 is significantly lower than the 100-year minima of the instrumental measurement period for spring, summer and autumn. This result is supported by independent documentary evidence about extremely low river flows and Europe-wide wild-, forest- and settlement fires. We found that an event of this severity cannot be simulated by state-of-the-art climate models.
"Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
"While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said."
Typical denier logic - we can't prove its greenhouse gases to 100% certainty, therefore, we are 100% certain its not greenhouse gas. Does this make sense to you?
"Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
"While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said."
Typical denier logic - we can't prove its greenhouse gases to 100% certainty, therefore, we are 100% certain its not greenhouse gas. Does this make sense to you?
Spoken like a true AGW faithful. I don't mind your religion, just keep the tithing to yourself.
About these lay media stories that were just posted by Formula88, focusing on the idea that the IPCC has not been sufficiently attentive to the possibility that recent global warming has less to do with human greenhouse gas emissions, and more to do with recent variations in the heat that has been coming our way from the sun; i.e., a sun that has been burning slightly hotter, of late :
The first story is 10 years ago already, from July 2004. The IPCC's latest comprehensive report (AR5) reviews the physical science basis in a section that was released in September 2013. During the almost ten years that elapsed, these "bombshell" findings about the sun and its heat output had enough time to percolate throughout the scientific community. So I think that these July 2004 observations about solar output have informed the latest findings of the IPCC, and they are reflected in the IPCC's most up to date and most numerically significant attribution summary :
It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.
The second story is from February 2013, less than a year before the September 2013 release of IPCC AR5 "The Physical Science Basis".
I read it all, including the closing paragraphs (omitted from Formula88's copy-and-paste) :
quote
Rawls worries that if solar activity falls, the effects could be dire.
“Unlike warming, cooling really is dangerous, regularly dropping the planet into hundred-thousand-year-long glacial periods.”
NASA has said that there is evidence that the most recent “Little Ice Age” was caused by a dip in solar activity.
“Almost no sunspots were observed on the sun's surface during the period from 1650 to 1715. This extended absence of solar activity may have been partly responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe,” during which temperatures were colder by about 1.8 degrees F than they are today, NASA has reported.
But Huertas said that’s not what we should worry about at a time when the effects of warming are already being felt.
“Climate change is affecting weather all across the planet and when it comes to extreme weather, the strongest links are to coastal flooding [and] heat waves,” Huertas said.
“While climate skeptics are arguing on the Internet about drafts of the report, states like New York and New Jersey are working to help people rebuild their homes in ways that have a better chance of surviving more destructive storms and flooding in the future,” he said.
I don't see any conflict between that story and the IPCC's attribution statement.
If anyone viewed the recent Cosmos episode "The World Set Free", there was a moment when the narrator (Neil deGrasse Tyson) went right to this topic :
quote
No, it’s not the Sun. We’ve been monitoring it closely for decades and the solar output has stayed the same. Another thing that points to the Sun not being the cause is that the temperature increases more at night than during the day and more in winter than in summer. This is what is expected from greenhouse warming, but the opposite of what the Sun would be doing. Tyson says, that beyond a reasonable doubt, we are changing the climate. The Sun isn’t the problem, but it is the solution. We have known this for a long time - much longer than you might think.
What that means is that the effects of recent global warming have been seen in elevated temperatures that are more significant (numerically) during nights than days, and during winter months than summer months. This is a distinctive fingerprint of the greenhouse effect--closely in line with what various computer climate models predict--and it leads us directly to an examination of how human activities are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide and other known greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That examination starts with fossil fuels, but it goes beyond that. Deforestation is part of that equation, along with other large-scale human changes to landscapes and freshwater circulation (including dams and other river diversions). But from everything that I have read or viewed, I think that fossil fuels are the "big kahuna" in terms of what is causing global warming.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 07-04-2014).]
About these lay media stories that were just posted by Formula88, ...
If you consider the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany a layman, sure. Science is rarely nice and cleanly cut and dried. In a system as complex as a planet's atmosphere, there are many factors to be considered. Except, to hear you and other alarmists, nothing matters but manmade greenhouse gases. They aren't the whole story. They never have been. Ignoring everything else isn't science.
Opps... [NOAA] caught with the fingers in the cookie jar (again)...
That's the second or third time around on this one, in this gi-normous forum thread, but it's the same old baloney :
Why and how certain numbers were revised :
First, the database update was no secret. NOAA previewed the changes years in advance by publishing descriptions of its methods in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The government agency also announced the new data set through public statements, and created a tool for users to compare and contrast temperatures from before and after the update. NOAA also makes its data and computer code available for anyone who wants to check the numbers. The new data set is called nClimDiv, and you can find more information about it on NOAA's National Climatic Data Center website.
Second, NOAA never changes the actual temperatures that were so carefully recorded over the decades. But it's no simple task to compare the present with the past. Methods of measuring temperature have changed markedly over the past century. The database tweaks are meant to make the comparisons between modern and obsolete technology more accurate.
In a June 29 blog post, Watts called this practice of adjusting temperatures "unsupportable" and said NOAA offered "no explanation to the public as to why" the July temperatures had changed.
But every scientific group that analyzes long-term climate trends does the same kind of tweaking. It's called standardizing, or homogenizing, the data. Independent climate analysis groups, such as the Berkeley Earth Project, have validated NOAA's approach.
For example, some weather stations once measured temperature in the morning, and others did so at sundown. Evening temperatures are warmer than in the morning, and directly comparing the two might artificially skew any long-term temperature trends. Instead, NOAA has standardized all its stations to morning reporting — a correction that led to widespread cooling of about 1 degree Fahrenheit (more than half a degree Celsius) in older records.
Other algorithms correct for changes in the number and location of weather stations. And even the thermometers have modernized, from glass to electric systems. The nClimDiv update also included thousands of digitized temperatures, painstakingly added from old paper records, which shifted some older temperature trends. Scientists with the National Climatic Data Center also sifted through old data to fix typos in the records and improve the monthly records for individual states.
Finally, the new data set also includes more high-elevation weather stations, so some regions are now cooler than they used to be, because mountainous regions are generally colder year-round.
The new data set is simply the latest in a long line of improvements to the methods NOAA uses to calculate national, state and regional temperature trends. The temperature records have shifted before (to the consternation of climate skeptics) and will likely shift again, as computers get faster and more records become available.
"This is a great example of why data sets are living things," said Derek Arndt, chief of NOAA's Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Climatic Data Center. "They can continually be refined and improved, and we can catch things today that we couldn't catch before."
And although the community of global warming skeptics focuses on temperature, the data update also affected precipitation and humidity records — but no one seems to be complaining about that online.
"This is progress," Arndt said. "If this were maybe a little less visible data set, these kinds of improvements would be welcome advances."
Some numbers were revised for the sake of overall accuracy, but the positive fingerprint of anthropogenic global warming was unchanged
Arndt noted that the majority of the record changes are tiny, except for the typos caught by hand. For the two hot Julys, the temperatures recorded in 1936 and 2012 are now so close that it's more accurate to consider the top spot a tie, he said.
"When you consider the uncertainty, they're effectively tied, and if they're not tied, it was a photo finish," Arndt told Live Science.
The old temperatures were 77.6 F (25.3 C) for July 2012 and 77.4 F (25.2 C) for July 1936.
The new, revised record pushes both temperatures down slightly, with July 1936 at 76.80 (24.89 C) and July 2012 just a hair lower at 76.77 F (24.87 C).
2012 also holds the title for the hottest year on record for the United States, and that conclusion hasn't changed with the new update, Arndt said.
The update also did not significantly change overall trends for the rise in national temperature since 1895, when the government first started its tracking. The new data set shows an increase of 1.33 F (0.74 C) per century, compared to 1.30 F (0.72 C) per century in the previous data set.
Attendees of The Heartland Institute’s 9th International Conference on Climate Change held in Las Vegas from July 7-9, “Just Don’t Wonder About Global Warming, Understand It,” heard some of the world’s leading climate scientists and researchers discuss the latest state of global warming science, including questions of whether manmade global warming will harm plants, animals, or human welfare. Eight hundred participants gathered to hear 64 speakers from 12 different countries despite the fierce summer heat of Las Vegas. At one point 4,000 individuals were listening to the conference as it was streamed live from Las Vegas.
Speakers addressed myths of climate alarmism, specifically refuting the often-repeated assertion that 97 percent of scientists disagree with so-called global warming skeptics. On the contrary, speakers noted, only 0.5 percent of the authors of 11,944 scientific papers on climate and related topics over the past 21 years have said they agree most of the warming since 1950 was manmade, and that is only one of the necessary preconditions for an asserted global warming crisis. Speakers also cited the Remote Sensing Systems satellite record which shows there now has been no global warming for 17 years and 10 months.
Busting Myths During the opening dinner, meteorologist Joe Bastardi explained extreme weather events are not becoming any more frequent or severe as the planet warms. To the contrary, Bastardi documented how hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other extreme weather events are declining in frequency and severity. To the extent there are short-term increases in extreme weather events at some places within the overall global decline, Bastardi showed those follow weather and climate patterns that existed long before recent global warming.
During the breakfast session on Day 2, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore chronicled the radicalization of once-noble environmentalist groups. Standing before photographs of himself leading environmental protests and provocative actions against whalers and other corporate entitites, Moore explained how Greenpeace and other environmental activist groups are now harming human health and welfare by demanding so many resources be dedicated to the fictitious global warming crisis. True environmental progress would be made fighting for land conservation and other real environmental concerns rather than trumped-up global warming claims, Moore explained.
Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and former program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, explained during the Day 2 luncheon how government research grants are promoting the false notion of an alarmist consensus. Large government research grants are handed out almost uniformly to scientists who will promote the idea of global warming crisis, which ensures more budgetary dollars for government agencies addressing the topic and subsequently more research grants for the participating scientists, he noted.
Presenting the Science The breakout sessions featured additional dozens of compelling presentations.
Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, demonstrated how all energy sources have environmental drawbacks. Hayden, moreover, showed scientifically how wind, solar, and other renewable power sources simply cannot meet the nation’s energy demands. Wind and solar power require tremendous amounts of land to produce even a very small amount of electricity. Although there may be room for expensive renewable power at the margins, global warming strategies that aim to shut down conventional power will not find enough replacement renewable power to keep the lights on, Hayden demonstrated. True land conservationists, said Hayden, are among the most vocal opponents of wind and solar power facilities.
Dr. John Dunn, a medical doctor, attorney, and advisor for the American Council on Science and Health, debunked EPA assertions that restrictions on power plant emissions will save lives and benefit human health. Dunn documented that human mortality rates are much higher during cold spells and winter months than during heat waves and summer months. Addressing EPA’s claims that tangential reductions in particulate matter and other emissions will save lives, Dunn showed that EPA’s assertions are totally unsupported and defy comprehensive health and mortality data. Also worth noting, EPA reports power plant emissions of the Six Principal Pollutants have already declined 70 percent even without EPA’s proposed carbon dioxide restrictions. Existing rules and regulations will reduce those emissions even further, with or without the proposed carbon dioxide restrictions.
Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor provided a concise and compelling summary of the scientific evidence for modest instead of severe global warming. Taylor’s presentation, along with all of the ICCC-9 presentations, was videotaped and is available online. Taylor gave a lively 10-minute talk with visual-friendly charts and graphs to share with family, friends, and acquaintances who would like to learn more about the global warming debate.
Denying Blessings of Modernity At the final panel discussion, “Panel 21: Global Warming as a Social Movement,” on Wednesday afternoon, the distinguished panelists included E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., founder and national spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance; Paul Driessen, J.D., a senior advisor to the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise; and Peter Ferrara, J.D., a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute. Serving as moderator was Minnesota State Rep. Pat Garofalo.
Panelists Beisner, Driessen, and Ferrara all argued climate alarmists tend to be radical environmentalists who view people primarily as polluters and consumers who use up Earth’s resources and poison the planet in the process, never seeing free people as voluntarily being good stewards of natural resources. Through the manmade global warming alarm, activists have used governments to deny affordable and reliable energy and other modern blessings to the developing world, panelists noted.
Notwithstanding all the discussion, I can recall the claims that the Northwest Passage would be open this year. It is not.
Notwithstanding all the statements of reducing ice levels in the Arctic, not only is the Northwest Passage still iced up, but the Antarctic sea ice continues to increase at record levels.
There still are fewer hurricanes, there are no drowning or starving polar bears, and no millions of weather refugees.
... I can recall the claims that the Northwest Passage would be open this year.
You are the only person I've ever heard or read "recalling" such "claims," but despite numerous requests you have yet to provide a citation of a source. Let's see it.
THE MYTH IS HEARTLAND IS A SCIENCE BASED GROUP THEY ARE ANTI-SCIENCE ANTI-FACT ANTI-TRUTH LYING SACKS OF CHIT PAID BY THE OIL CORPs
...and all pro-global warming scientists are PAID for by the government(s) (ultimately the taxpayer) - SO, what is your point???
Just because they are (if it is 100% true, no documentation I have seen) paid for by oil corps - according to some on here - automatically makes them 100% "LYING SACKS OF CHIT" - so yea, REAL mature.
FYI - oil companies ALSO put money towards research into reducing emissions and helping the environment - so I guess all those scientists that are working in these areas are also "LYING SACKS OF CHIT"...and since you are going around using petroleum based products, you are also funding (again if true) these so call "LYING SACKS OF CHIT" - what does that make you?
Originally posted by Arns85GT: Notwithstanding all the discussion, I can recall the claims that the Northwest Passage would be open this year. It is not.
Notwithstanding all the statements of reducing ice levels in the Arctic, not only is the Northwest Passage still iced up, but the Antarctic sea ice continues to increase at record levels.
There still are fewer hurricanes, there are no drowning or starving polar bears, and no millions of weather refugees.
Observations based on solid facts? About as solid as that shifting Antarctic sea ice :
Has Antarctic Sea Ice Expansion Been Overestimated? New research suggests that Antarctic sea ice may not be expanding as fast as previously thought Jul 22, 2014
A team of scientists led by Ian Eisenman of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, said that much of the increase measured for Southern Hemisphere sea ice could be due to a processing error in the satellite data.
Arctic sea ice is retreating at a dramatic rate. In contrast, satellite observations suggest that sea ice cover in the Antarctic is expanding – albeit at a moderate rate – and that sea ice extent has reached record highs in recent years. What’s causing Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover to increase in a warming world has puzzled scientists since the trend was first spotted. Now, a team of researchers has suggested that much of the measured expansion may be due to an error, not previously documented, in the way satellite data was processed.
“This implies that the Antarctic sea ice trends reported in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) AR4 and AR5 [the 2007 and 2013 assessment reports] can't both be correct: our findings show that the data used in one of the reports contains a significant error. But we have not yet been able to identify which one contains the error,” said Eisenman. . . .
This is the 15 July satellite view of the Arctic ice field. It also shows the median.
You will notice that the Northwest Passage is all iced up.
There has been frequent predictions based on Global Warming, that the Arctic Ocean would be open water all year round. You have to look at old newspapers.
Nasa, scientists have long promoted the notion of free ocean in the Arctic.
NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
In 2007 National Geographic predicted the total loss of summer ice in the Arctic by 2012
So , we start here with a brief news column from 1954. Not a peer reviewed professional science journal article from 1954. A brief news column about some scientists who wanted the U.S. government to provide more funding for the climate related research projects of International Geophysical Year. In 1954. And they said before a Congressional committee that they were concerned about a trend that could lead to a year-round ice free Arctic Ocean as soon as 2004, or possibly 1980 if the warming trend had accelerated even further. And how far off were those speculations from 60 years ago, and about 30 years before the era of round-the-clock data measurements from climate monitoring space satellites had even started to become routine?
The length of the melt season for Arctic sea ice is growing by several days each decade, and an earlier start to the melt season is allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb enough additional solar radiation in some places to melt as much as four feet of the Arctic ice cap’s thickness, according to a new study by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA researchers.
Arctic sea ice has been in sharp decline during the last four decades. The sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. The seven lowest September sea ice extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the past seven years.
"The Arctic is warming and this is causing the melt season to last longer," said Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at NSIDC, Boulder and lead author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. "The lengthening of the melt season is allowing for more of the sun’s energy to get stored in the ocean and increase ice melt during the summer, overall weakening the sea ice cover." . . .
The very purpose of the IPCC is to look at ALL the scientific findings that are reported and pare away the least supportable speculations to reveal a solid basis for policymakers.
But the first rule of Climate Misperception Club is DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE FINDINGS THAT ARE PUBLISHED BY THE IPCC.
I will now violate the first rule of Climate Misperception Club and quote directly from IPCC, Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis :
The conclusion that much of the warming over the past 50 years is due to human activities is now “extremely likely,” upgraded from “very likely” in the last report.
Estimates of future sea level rise have been significantly increased due to a better understanding of the movement of ice sheets in a warming climate.
The Arctic Ocean is now projected to be ice-free during the summer by mid-century under a high emissions scenario, instead of the end of century as in previous reports.
Time Machine now returns you to your regularly scheduled program of vintage media reports from the 1950s.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 07-23-2014).]
Maybe it would be overall better for you as an individual if your provincial government were not trying to go "green" and reduce the reliance on fossil fuels across Ontario. Maybe it would be better for a lot of other individuals as well.
There's no straightforward, easily managed path that leads directly from sound natural science to sound public policy.
This doesn't falsify the IPCC, Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis by one iota.
...and all pro-global warming scientists are PAID for by the government(s) (ultimately the taxpayer) - SO, what is your point???
Just because they are (if it is 100% true, no documentation I have seen) paid for by oil corps - according to some on here - automatically makes them 100% "LYING SACKS OF CHIT" - so yea, REAL mature.
FYI - oil companies ALSO put money towards research into reducing emissions and helping the environment - so I guess all those scientists that are working in these areas are also "LYING SACKS OF CHIT"...and since you are going around using petroleum based products, you are also funding (again if true) these so call "LYING SACKS OF CHIT" - what does that make you?
HEARTLAND was created by the tobacco CORPrats to lie about the effects of smoking when the tobacco guys lost and heartland lost their cash income from that they needed a new subject to get paid to LIE about GW and BIG OIL IS THE HEARTLANDS NEW SUBJECT TO LIE ABOUT FOR CASH but they were to stupid to change their name to something new
and no most pro-global warming scientists areNOT PAID for by the government SOME TEACH AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS OTHERS WORK FOR PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS OR INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH GROUPS A FEW WORK FOR CORPrats like major media
there is a real difference in research science and CORPrat lying scum but you fail totally to see it
[This message has been edited by ray b (edited 07-23-2014).]
