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Well it seems Temperatures at Deadhorse, AK (the airport at Prudhoe Bay) have climbed above Zero degrees C on May 24th for the First time since Oct 15th of 2006.
This is the latest date for an above freezing temperature in their records of all previous years.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/PASC/2006/10/1/CustomHistory...
Looks like that is true.
http://www.arh.noaa.gov/clim/climate.php?stnid=PASC&mon=5&yr=2007&type=e...
Of course, it also look like last year was the warmest.
Two thing to consider when looking at real world data:
1) The data is noisy.
2) Weather is not climate.
The 27th of may is kind of interesting. 2006 is listed as both the highest max and the lowest max.
I have downloaded all the daily temps for Deadhorse dating back to 1986, the extent of their records. The annual highs lows and avg’s were then determined for each month, each year, and each winter Nov 1 – Apr 30. 1998 was the highest annual and winter temps found. 1991 was the coldest annual temp and 1992 was the coldest winter temp. The deviation between these was about 15 degrees F. The avg May high temp occurred in 1998 at 35.7 Deg F, 2006 avg high May temp was 29 deg F. The coldest May avg high was in 1986 at 24.8 deg F. so far this decade all the Avg. May highs have been less than 30 Deg F.
I have plotted all this data, and for the past 20 years can see nothing to indicate a trend either positive or negative, of course this is only one data point in the artic region.
It's also only 21 years of data, and we have been burning FF in quantity for 150 years.
Go ask some climate scientists for their datasets! I bet it would be cool to look at(as well as being HUGE)!
Really only the last 50 or 60 years. Before that the consumption of fossil fuels was relatively insignificant.
Coal counts as fossil fuel and was used for the industrial revolution since the 1800's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining
They have burnt "sea coal" in Great Britain since medieval times. However with a small and rural population, I doubt if we got to 10% of todays consumption before the early part of the last century.
The key is the 'tipping point'.
At what point did our CO2 emissions increase past the ability of the natural environment to sequester them out of the atmosphere?
This is complicated by the fact that the absorption of the oceans etc. increased as CO2 concentrations increased, thus partially shielding us from the consequences of our actions.
The latest data suggests the planet is no longer doing so. Co2 concentrations have abruptly shifted by 3ppm per annum, whereas previously the rise was 1.9ppm
Another really important item is the human factor and data integrity.
Was the station automated or was the data collected by a human with a clipboard?
Were the instruments properly calibrated? Were their accuracy and reproducibility sufficient to detect the changes under investigation? Were the same people an instruments used during the entire period of data collection? Is the time span of your data sufficient to show the effect you are looking for?
Metrologists often run into the problem of people believing a digital readout without bothering to check if the instrument is working properly.
As I have delved into subjects outside my own specialty, (peak oil, climate change......) I have found that you have a limited number of choices.
1) Believe the experts.
2) Get a job in that industy and learn what really is happening.
3) Examine the data and draw your own conclusions.
4) Take reasonable precautions (picking the low hanging fruit) and monitor the situation.
All options have their own short comings, especially with complex subjects. I have chosen #4.
There are innumerable reasons to stop using fossil fuel. Energy security, air quality, peak oil, climate change....
Any one of them could be wrong, but it seems unlikely that they all are.
If you are interested in climate change here is a good place to start:
http://www.realclimate.org/
It is run by real climate scientists
I think I should point out that Metrology is not Meteorology.
Metrology: the science of weights and measures.
Meteorology: the science dealing with the atmosphere and its phenomena, including weather and climate.
"There are innumerable reasons to stop using fossil fuel. Energy security, air quality, peak oil, climate change....
Any one of them could be wrong, but it seems unlikely that they all are."
I have to say that your approach to "the big issues" is one I wish we heard more of from the those who have strong feelings about such matters. I think the general public would perhaps be more open to a multi-reason approach to dealing with climate change and peak oil rather than the oft heard "the world is going to end.." As some say, you can catch more bees with honey.
Please explain how we feed 6.5 billion people without fossil fuels.
"Please explain how we feed 6.5 billion people without fossil fuels."
Please explain to me why we would have to.
Because we are running out? But I thought the peak oil informed insist that peak is NOT about running out.
Because we are so efficient in how we use fossil fuel that we have no room for efficiency gains to provide for the needs of agriculture and food transport?
(What is the percentage of food transport energy use compared to the percent of fuel used for other commercial and industrial materials transport?
Because of all the ways we use fossil fuels, if production drops, agriculture will have to the first area cut, instead of cutting the waste and ineffeciencies in other areas?
Because we use so much oil in food production, (or was it natural gas that is used in making fertilizer, and is the predominant fuel in food processing?
(and is the natural gas situation equal in all areas of the world, or are we talking about a world supply of natural gas that is still relatively large, even though North America suffers on this issue?)
time for someone to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes: Constantly trying to terrify people with immediate threat of starvation is nothing but a scare tactic, and sends anyone who can think packing away from the peaksters. It is one more way of discrediting the real and serious energy issues. And before you jump in and point to some third world country where people are starving, yes, there are starving people in the world and has always been, but if you are going to contend that lack of fossil fuel is causing starvation, there must be a causal relationship. If not, I could make the argument that:
(a) I drive a Diesel car
(b) There are starving people in the world
conclusion: Because I drive a Diesel car there are starving people in the world
Proposal: to keep people from starving, I must switch to an gasoline car.
Such is the logic in modern problem solving thought, 21st century American style.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Even after peak there will be plenty of increasingly expensive oil, but as you point out, sufficient for the purpose of farming. I believe we will see economic factors, climate change & ecosystem degradation, plus increasing energy costs coming together to put downward pressure on food production. The result being increasingly higher food prices, less choice and more of the economy devoted to farming at the expense of other less important areas.
I agree with you that there is a great deal of flexibility in the system regards how the available oil/energy is used.
Strange, as I was writing this post a BBC news item came on discussing and linking energy availability, food production and the need to expand agriculture onto marginal land (presumably with lower yields and at a higher cost). Essentially, suggesting we trade up on our vulnerability, let someone else deal with the even bigger problem in the future whilst we just carry on as normal. We're toast!
Triumvirate of collapse - Economy, Ecosystem, Energy
Real climate is where I found TOD in May of 05.
Also I would point out that I tend to use your # 3&4 most always. as for #1 it is hard to distiguish the experts from the so called experts.
The problem with option #3 is that climate is just so complex (In fact it's chaotic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Take hurricanes for instance:
http://www.hurricanealley.net/Images/natlhs2.gif
http://www.hurricanealley.net/natlhst.htm
The trend line said last year should have been another kickass year, but it was a dud. Complex behavior tends to be complicated.
Actually I think this list could be distilled down to three, since #2 & 3 are really the same thing:
1) Believe the experts
2) Become an expert
3) Hedge your bet
I don't blame people for preferring approach #2 regarding global warming, but I think it's very naive to assume that a few months of reading internet articles will allow one to discuss the topic intelligently with scientists who've spent decades trying to understand it.
I'll bet these same people don't ask airlines if they can inspect the engines before they fly or research the farms that produce their food. Both of these are issues of life or death, so why are the climate scientists being held to a different standard?
Brilliant comment about the double standards when it comes to the public "judging" science. Science is science. Funny thing is, "real science" is taken as a liberal conspiracy. Whereas The Bell Curve, et al is just trashy social science posing as "real science" is for a large part taken as accurate! (Well, mostly by racist conservatives, but lets not get off on a tangent).
One thing I'm curious about. People like Steve Sailer, who try to get their name plastered everywhere to spread their anti-racial-mixing/diversity-agenda actually get interviews with (supposedly) reputable scientists like Steven Pinker. These people seethed at the teeth to talk about this stuff, and trust me it's not my problem--I can't help coming across Sailer here there and everywhere, predictably because he uses his lame little website/blog and the turd of a website "VDARE" to promote his shrouding of science in racism, or as it is otherwise known "Scientific race realism". If that's not Orwellian I don't know what is! I like Steven Pinker's work, and am willing to go out on a limb and say that I find some conservative "principles" in generally to be virtuous--although I strongly despise the present incarnation of conservatives as they are represented in Congress by the GOP, the executive branch and in many respects the Judicial branch. And it goes without saying that the present bunch of Democrats are equally so pathetic, just not as highly regressive and backwards thinking as *some* components of the right.
Pinker has actually extended an interview to Sailer! Which is just unbelievable to me... I guess the point Pinker was trying to make is that he, the intelligent conservative scientist, is capable of pissing me off by giving an interview to a gun-toting racist with a bad taste in movies. My questions are the following:
1. Is associating oneself with tacit racism in fact a form of racism?
2. When a scientist does so, is that in fact room to worry about said scientists highly political works of popular science--which almost approach the category of social science in their scope? At least from the perspective of the scientific community, Pinker does begrudgingly acknowledge that there is no merit to "race realism" in his last book "The Blank Slate". He also cites his sources. However, his field "psychology", no matter how many just-so stories he tells himself, is still not up to the tasks of the hard sciences. He doesn't seem to like this, and his broad overriding message is along the lines of "social science listen up to real science here, it is inherently conservative!" I don't know about this, it is a little sketchy--and I'd rather have Richard Dawkins be at the helm of that boat... not one who associates with crypto-racists, like Pinker consciously chooses to do. Pinker and Sailer obviously have different agendas--Pinkers is obviously more honest, and he sincerely wants science to be taken seriously by everyone. But he is tinged by that aspect that completely overrides Sailer--the obsession with "liberals", or probably more appropriately communist, marxists types---who I'm sure they both think is really at the core of every modern liberal. How does science meld with the social sciences? It is bound to sooner or later, and probably has already begun a very slow process of doing so. Pinker might see his role as throwing the first pipe bombs in the social-science/science melding wars. He clearly wants the outcome to have a conservative philosophy--being a conservative scientist. Is this okay? I think not. Pinker, ironically enough, seems to be conducting himself much like Steven Jay Gould did, from the precisely opposite camp! How do we here at TOD, and the scientific community in general, eschew this type of melding of politics and science--when both sides are clearly guilty? And on top of that, when it takes at *least* one federal party to tackle the subject of multiple scientifically diagnosed disasters most likely on our way?
And three is a charm...
3. The problem seems to be in general not scientific, but political. This is the problem, and everyone knows it--that is why Pinker feels comfortable letting his conservatism flail in TBS. If in fact science is inherently political (as seen by the public!) then there either needs to be:
A) A hardcore scientific PR-attack squad on anyone who makes grave errors addressing scientific issues to the broad, general public. I always thought that perhaps an independent organization of "science" which has federal oversight oversights over any opinions expressed by the other branches of government when it comes to bras bones issues of science. Now, don't dismiss this right away! Imagine what this entails. This would be along the lines of the present system, except entirely reversed... This committee could censure the president, or his office, or any other body of the federal or state government when it falsely *uses and abuses* humanity's knowledge of science. Sort of like an ADL for science, which I always have thought is greatly needed. This organization/committee would be highly democratic among the top scientists and scientific institutions in the world--based on the input of all and established by brutal peer-review.
B) This committee would also be established as completely non-partisan, and would specifically "go after" anyone who used science for unwarranted political purposes. The problem here is that even people are "apolitical" still have some political tendencies in the closet...
Still, I think Science Magazine and Nature telling Dubya what could and couldn't come out of his mouth is better than Dubya telling apolitical and honest scientists what they can and cannot say. Imagine!
In reality the healthy skepticism of science is inherently conservative. New claims require extrordinary amounts of evidence before being generally accepted. Arrhenius a century ago faced this wall of skepticism as human induced climate change built evidence upon evidence to become accepted. It is just that some political conservatives believe in things that have no supporting evidence like racism and creationism which leads these conservatives to believe scientists are a bunch of commies.
In judging a conservative, always ask youself what he is trying to conserve.
It is always something he believes to be in his own personal interest, and often something that is not in your interest. He tells you it is good because it is part of the way things always were. If you are black, gay, female, or poor, how advantageous is that?
There are all kinds of things from humanity's past which modern conservatives don't support because those things would undermine the inequality of power that conservatives wish to maintain and grossly expand over everyone else. Like Christianity's former ban on lending money for interest. Or the Hebrew Jubilee, where all debts were canceled. Or matriarchal societies. Or Rome's insistence that any man could become a citizen regardless of race or language as long as he added the gods of Rome (meaning its laws) to his existing obediance. Or England's common lands. Or the rightful ownership of the land of America.
If you only select out the parts of history that give you an unfair advantage and call that "traditional values", you will reduce me to slavery in short order.
Remember, folks, the Amish are the only real Christians and the Aboriginies are the only real conservatives. Everyone else is just pursuing power.
Brilliantly--and beautifully, put.
How is Steve Sailer bashing relevant? He is a journalist who stated that he avoids commenting on global warming because it is a very complex subject and he couldn't add to the public's overall understanding of the issue. The verbosity of your comment just reveals your own pseudo-liberal biases.
Hah!
Awesome, you nailed me.
Perhaps, but he is openly racist on some other issues.
The only measure in which he is any better than O'Reilly and co is that (to his credit) he doesn't stoop to snide trash talking. Quietly offensive is still offensive however.
The weather channel is now showing a program on the Alaskan meltdown.
Bitteroldcoot
1) Believe the experts.
2) Get a job in that industy and learn what really is happening.
3) Examine the data and draw your own conclusions.
4) Take reasonable precautions (picking the low hanging fruit) and monitor the situation.
dipchip: Also I would point out that I tend to use your # 3&4 most always. as for #1 it is hard to distiguish the experts from the so called experts.
Actually, when it comes to climate change, or really any other scientific field, it isn't.
People who are experts in climate are the researchers at the major worldwide oceanographic and geophysical institutes and universities with graduate and postdoctoral training in thus, and who professionally pursue novel research and publish in the primary scientific literature.
The problem with doing #3 is that if you're not an expert, drawing your own conclusions from particular data is likely to result in erroneous conclusions in many circumstances because the complexity of the data and breadth of the data sets involved require an expert's judgment and knowledge how any one datum fits in with the other.
Of the widely available resources that a reasonably educated layman is going to find accessible, generally 'www.realclimate.org' is about as good as you're going to get, since the primary articles are written by scientists in the field. This isn't a comprehensive viewpoint of course since still 98% of such scientists are far too busy doing their own jobs and don't have time to blog and especially attempt to rebut various inanities that inevitably pop up on such blogs.
I would like to continue this conversation, however I have a garden that has been calling ever since it stoped raining.
I think some people are good at detecting who are the experts, and some people aren't. I think I am pretty good at it, but that is an unverifiable claim. There is just something about the real versus the bogus that stands out to me. Part of it is recognising who the experts really are of course, but then where the limits of experts lie, and what their biases are. Then I have to weigh it with the general consensus, and with what makes sense from what I know of physics etc.
It also helps to assign probabilities. Most people look for a straight yes or no, but I am comfortable with something being 90% true.
In the end, there is no formula for determining the truth, The closest approximation is loosely called the scientific method, but people aren't even sure what that is. Of course, science doesn't necessarily have the right answer yet, more likely the best answer so far.
To be honest, I can't see how the average person can make sense of the deluge of data out there; nor can they be expected to, we can't all be experts on every topic. Therefore I don't really blame them for switching over to the sports channel.
Being an expert and kidding yourself are too entirely different things. The real trouble is knowing which experts are after truth, and which are being overly biased in their research and kidding themselves into finding what they want to believe or what they are being paid to find.
See one of my later posts for an example of a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering here in NZ who has just admitted that when studying the hydrogen economy models in the US she and her fellow researchers essentially lied, because they could not believe what the data was telling them - that it would not work.
I doubt this is an isolated case. In fact after many years of researching medical sciences, and with several family members in various medical professions, I can tell you that biased research is incredibly dominant in med/pharmaceutical research... it may be less so in other areas, but I suspect the more industry influences a particular field, the more biased the "experts" are in general.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Google the words Nasa, Grace and Greenland. Greenland is melting pretty quickly at around 200 cubic km per year. Glaciers have speeded up and new islands are appearing and being named.
It is getting warmer up there and melting ice sheets seem to be the biggest challenge posed by GW.
The other thing to note is that icesheet melting and break up is not linear. As new rock/ground is exposed to sunlight it absorbs heat much more quickly and the surrounding ice melts extremely rapidly. Further more, as meltwater drops to the bottom of an ice sheet, it lubricates the bottom speeding breakup even faster. Larsen B broke up in 30 days, shocking scientists who had previously thought it would take 100 years to dissappear.
In fact the physics of ice sheets is a very new science and an understanding of how they operate, particularly as they melt and break up is only being gained now. The science is so new that it still needs time for peer review and for the main, is NOT included in the latest IPCC reports.
In a triumph of irony over hope, the impact of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels could hit hardest as the impacts of PO get really bad. Our just deserts maybe. Greenland contains 3m km3 of ice so I am hoping that it will take a long time, but if the rate of melt increase continues to grow exponentially, it could all go very quickly.
On rising sea levels, there was a program on Australian TV last night where it was claimed that sea levels in some islands, which are the last refuge of the Bengal tiger, are already suffering sea levels rises of 2.5cm per year. I thought the rise was only a couple of mm per year. There are probably tidal factors impacting sea level rise - as with all things PO and GW, the impacts seem to be non-linear!
"WEATHER IS NOT CLIMATE"
I see this listed often. If you really believe this then I would like to point out that "weather" is used everyday by the media sighting "experts" who make the claim the days 'weather" events are the result/cause of global warming.
Weather events are used every single day to make the claim for GW.
It is part of the "drumbeat".
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Weather is very definitely not climate. Single events versus statistics. Although your reading of the media is selective, your point is not without merit. Nevertheless, it is not like that in the scientific literature and not in commentary by scientists. This is why the media is a very poor source for information. At best it is useful for some pointers. For the general public, there are now many outreach sites written by scientists and there is no excuse taking one's positions on these issues solely at the word of commentators. The New Scientist site on this is excellent and addresses every issue raised by the self-styled sceptics. Many of the latter claim, dishonestly, that this or that issue is "not addressed" by climate science. But in every case that is decidedly not true.