"The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."
A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is running a fever and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century."
1 degree huh? Yawn.
The most interesting thing is that nowhere in the entire story are the words "sun" or "solar" used. Until a study is done which excludes the main source of heat on Earth as a cause of global warming, I refuse to take this any more seriously than a guy walking down the street with a sign saying "Repent! The End Is Near!".
UPDATE: You have to love CNN.com. They wear their bias on their sleeves. They have updated their headline story. Now it is "Study: Earth 'likely' hottest in 2,000 years". Mind you, the original article had the following quote:
"Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had concluded the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years. Their research was known as the "hockey-stick" graphic because it compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.
The National Academy scientists concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research from the late 1990s was "likely" to be true, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the '90s research "are very close to being right" and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said."
In other words, they are not saying anything new with the new article. Just beating the dead horse. Of course, they will blame the horse's death on global warming.
4 comments:
Influence of "solar input" (in Climate Science parlance) has been extensively studied. There is little evidence pointing to the sun being responsible for the warming since the 1950s.
As for the "1 degree? Yawn." remark, a one-degree difference on average, across the entire globe, means a great deal more energy is stored in the ocean and atmosphere, which means, each season, a significantly higher chance of nasty hurricanes and wildfires (the insurance industry has already caught onto this), and just generally more extreme weather -- more hot summers and cold winters, more long droughts and sudden floods. And because the change will be smaller near the equator and larger near the poles, a one degree change in the average can mean much more up at the ice-caps. We've already seen, in the Larsen-B event, that a lot of sections of ice are less stable than we'd thought. If you're yawning at a one-degree increase in global average temperature, I sure hope you don't own any real estate near Miami.
I suppose I'm not likely to convince you. But the evidence is freely available. Even the White House isn't denying it, these days. They're just pretending that doing anything about it would be too expensive. Saner people see it as an opportunity -- the world is going to need a whole new industry, and who better to pioneer it than us? Instead of borrowing money from China to buy oil from countries that don't like us, how about we pioneer green energy tech, and get rich selling it to the Chinese, Indians, etc...
Auros,
With all due respect, we are also overdue for another ice age too. Perhaps the global warming is holding it off?
There was one study I saw the other day which said there has been no global warming since 1940. Even the study you referenced attributed 25-35% of global warming to solar activity. That is NOT insignificant.
However, I do agree with you about needing new energy sources. But it is more about us needing energy independence than it is about any global warming boogeyman.
Dick,
Thanks for stopping by! Good point.
Btw, the word "solar" was used (in the 2nd-to-last paragraph):
>>>Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, it said.<<<
So since this study DOES take the sun into account, are you willing to consider taking it seriously?
slowriter,
They must have added that to the article later, because it was NOT there before.
That being said, how bad were the solar fluctuations prior to 1850?
While we can verify volcanic eruptions prior to 1850, solar fluctuation evidence is far more speculative.
The basic problem is we only have around a half century's worth of good evidence. In the lifetime of a planet, that is a blink of an eye.
Frankly, I am more concerned about the Earth being hit by a large asteroid.
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