Glacier National Park is one of the few US Government organizations that hasn't backed down to political pressure about climate change. There are multiple signs in the park that say something along the lines of "See that glacier over there on the hill? Given the rate of increasing temperatures due to climate change, we expect that glacier to disappear within 20 years. Climate change is caused by humans releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which trap heat." It made me really thankful I got to visit last year before they are all gone.
I forget where I read it, but the Rockies' glaciers fare much worse than those in the Coast Range under global warming. If you want a shocking example, visit the Athabasca Glacier between Banff and Jasper [1]. It stretched all the way to the current highway when white men first passed through in the mid-18th century, and there are concrete pylons showing where its snout was at various points in the 20th century. That sad little side-glacier on the left connected to the main one when people first climbed the mountain on the left (Mount Andromeda). See it while you can.
EDIT: On an unrelated note, the photographer, John Scurlock, has some amazing aerial photos of other mountains: http://www.pbase.com/nolock/
Glaciers carved the landscape there, which is why it's called "Glacier National Park". Sad the glaciers are melting so quickly, but they've been melting for thousands of years.
We need to measure the average temperature of the earth starting with accurate thermometers and not pictures of polar bears, ice bergs, glaciers, patterns of ice in late summer in the Arctic, coral reefs, the snows on Mount Killimanjaro, etc.
This NYT story is one more example of why I refuse to consider the NYT for anything, why it's "dead to me", on paper can't compete with Charmin and on the Web is useless for wrapping dead fish heads.
The human mind is tuned to story. Stories help us make sense of facts and give them meaning. That's probably different from person to person - possibly you believe you're on the fact end of the spectrum.
This is a small part of the overall climate story, but it's actually what you're arguing for I think - it's a factual account of how glacier ice has changed in the park. The same has happened in the Juneau Icefields, Mount Rainier and elsewhere.
Stories are also a useful way to summarize the facts and can be misused to support things that are not factual - I understand that's what you're saying here.
I'm not aware of the story you allude to around accurate or inaccurate thermometers - the one you believe to be the truth.
This is yet again the NYT talking about climate. Their goal is to create and push a never ending sequence of stories about climate, to create a lasting audience for such stories, and, then, to continue to feed the audience.
The stories all have a foundation -- the sky is falling, in this case, the earth is warming, growing warmer, and the cause is sin, human sin from human greed and corruption, for human activities that release CO2 which is warming the planet dangerously, melting glaciers, ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, making the oceans acid and killing the coral reefs, killing off food for the whales, making the lobsters move farther north, raising sea levels, flooding low lands, killing the polar bears, etc.
IMHO all this NYT stuff is just totally cooked-up, made-up, stirred-up, gang-up, pile on, nonsense, fake stories to get eyeballs for ad revenue and otherwise from junk down to a dangerous effort to sabotage the economies of the world.
Well, then, let's start at the beginning: Warmer. How much warmer, since when, measured how, by whom, reviewed where, published where, when? On this basic, foundation issue, IMHO, the NYT should put up or shut up. Since they won't, and are free to publish their scare sewage, the NYT is dead to me but I am willing occasionally to call them out on their dangerous nonsense.
For this foundation, we just need the data, temperature, in degrees F, C, or K.
But the NYT doesn't want to do this.
Similarly stories at Nova want to say "If temperatures keep increasing ..." Well, from all I've seen, there is no significant evidence that temperatures have increased significantly for 20 or so years. Moreover, I see no significant evidence that so far human activity has had any significant effect on temperature at all. Moreover, I have seen lots of evidence that CO2, from humans, volcanoes, out gassing from the oceans, rotting plant life, etc. has never had any significant effect on temperature for at least 800,000 years. I've seen lots of evidence of significant temperature changes but where CO2 could not have been the cause -- there must be other causes. Basically, over the past 800,000 years, temperature has changed significantly often, up and down, but CO2 could not have been the main cause or hardly ever or even once a significant cause.
Why? Never, but never, not even once, in the whole 800,000 years was significantly lower temperature closely preceded by significantly lower CO2 concentration. So, CO2 had nothing to do with the change, and there must be other causes. For higher temperatures, the story is nearly the same. The evidence is clear: It's just ain't CO2, guys. Sorry 'bout that -- the causes are elsewhere. The Medieval warm period, closely preceded by higher CO2? Nope. The Little Ice Age, closely preceded by less CO2? Nope. The cooling from 1940 to 1970 from lower CO2? Nope -- if anything, higher CO2.
It's over, guys: The CO2 scare is a scam.
So, this OP is just again the NYT flogging their fake story. Sure, the NYT used to have scare stories about global warming, but somehow they got the memo and changed over to scare stories about "climate change" -- well, that's somewhat safe since we can be sure the climate will keep changing.
Then, sure, we get lots of stories about why we must fight climate change -- how the heck to do that? Like the Mayans who killed people to pour their blood on a rock so that the sun would keep moving across the sky and, thus, avoid climate change if the sun stopped?
What the NYT is doing is essentially the same as the Mayan charlatans killing people. And if the NYT had their way, many people would be killed. Indeed, many are being killed in Africa because of attempts to avoid releasing CO2. The NYT is up to dirty business, very dirty business.
Great satire. The way you delicately ignore the evidence of temperature increases (e.g. the hockey stick graph) while saying you are not aware of any significant temperature increases is quite artful.
The hockey stick graph was a lie and a fraud -- there never was any such thing.
Moreover, as in
Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the
Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council,
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last
2,000 Years,
ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press,
2006.
the temperature in year 2006 was essentially exactly the same as in the year 1000 before any role for CO2.
Moreover, also from that report,
the increases from the 100 years before 2006 were essentially exactly the same as in the 100 years before year 1000. So, the increases in the last 100 years or so are not unusual and not necessarily from CO2 -- there can be other causes. Nearly year 1000, there really were other causes.
Moreover, we've been pulling out of the Little Ice Age since the late 1800s or so. We were deep into the Little Ice Age when Washington crossed the Delaware and when Napoleon returned from Moscow, and NOT from lower CO2.
The real hockey stick curves were from climate models that made predictions of hockey stick increases that have all been proven wildly wrong by now -- only a tiny fraction of the models made accurate predictions, that temperature would stay essentially the same. The graphs are at, say,
Again, yet again, once again, over again, one more time, in the whole 800,000 years of the Antarctic ice core studies, there were lots of significant temperature changes but not once was significantly lower temperature closely preceded by significantly lower CO2, and the case for higher temperatures is nearly the same.
So, there are other causes -- CO2 can't be the only cause.
Moreover, the evidence that CO2 is increasing temperature now is junk -- temperature hasn't changed significantly in about 20 years while CO2 concentrations have increased.
Again, It's not getting warmer now. It's not particularly warm now and was significantly warmer often enough in the past. CO2 is from not a cause at all or at most only a minor one -- the main causes are elsewhere. For the last 800,000 years, the good evidence is sun spot activity -- good luck trying to stop or change that!
Roy Spencer (the guy who did the chart) has been thoroughly dismissed. Not because of his views, but because his models terrible, he never does any actual studies, and he will tweak models until he gets the output he wants.
It is interesting that the hockey stick can be both a lie, fraud, and never exist.
The satiric brilliance of many of your 'arguments' is that they aren't even logically valid. Suppose the temp in 2006 was the same as 1000 years ago (it wasn't but suppose), it doesn't even remotely follow that man-made CO2 emissions don't cause the Earth to get warmer. It is a comically absurd leap of basic logic to get to that conclusion.
The new climate denier stance is that you can't prove 100% without a doubt that it's human activity. The past decade has ended the "Is the temperature really increasing" debate.
The stories all have a foundation -- the sky is falling, in this case, the earth is warming, growing warmer, and the cause is sin, human sin from human greed and corruption, for human activities that release CO2 which is warming the planet dangerously, melting glaciers, ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, making the oceans acid and killing the coral reefs, killing off food for the whales, making the lobsters move farther north, raising sea levels, flooding low lands, killing the polar bears, etc.
This article did not mention CO2, sin, greed, or corruption. There is a lot of FUD being thrown around in the public these days, but I didn't find any of it in this article. Maybe I missed it, so feel free to pull out some choice quotes.
More than 50% is caused by CO2, which mostly comes from powering our homes and cars (burning fossil fuels). You can be sinful using green energy as well.
Global warming doesn't cause acidic oceans. You're thinking of acid rain. You don't hear about it as much any more because congress passed The Clean Air Act. Since then there's been reduction of acid rain. I'm old enough to remember when acid rain was a "naturally occurring phenomena and not provably linked to industrial byproducts"
The temperature has been very stable for the last 10K years. It's only been very recent that we've had such an uptick. Scientist are able to discern the temperatures of the past through core samples. Those samples also show dramatically higher CO2.
You chose to highlight the years from 1940-1970. This isn't a discussion about the natural oscillations in weather. This about the proven sharp increase in temperatures as it compares to on a paleo scale.
*
1. The earth is warming at an accelerating rate
2. High levels of CO2 have been linked with paleo level rising temperatures in the past
3. Our current CO2 levels are orders of magnitude higher than anything found in the past.
4. If the temperatures continue to rise the sea levels will rise, storms will become stronger, and we'll have both more floods and more droughts (depending on where you are). There are a host of other ecological impacts.
Our options are:
a) work with the rest of the planet to alleviate the likely causes as currently determined by analysis of the data and research of >95% of the science community. At the same time we can continue to research and refine our understanding.
b) We can assert that none of this is true and hope that it will magically get better on it's own.
The earth is going to be fine. We can kill everything, including ourselves, and the planet will just keep turning. There's other planets in the solar system that are also fine, we just can't live on them.
The goal isn't to save the earth. The goal is to make sure we aren't turning the only planet we have into something either uninhabitable, or a nightmare.
P.S.
Then, sure, we get lots of stories about why we must fight climate change -- how the heck to do that? Like the Mayans who killed people to pour their blood on a rock so that the sun would keep moving across the sky and, thus, avoid climate change if the sun stopped?
There is no evidence that anything like realistic atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have ever caused or ever will cause significant warming. None. Zip, zilch, zero.
Right, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Now NYT climate expert (ha!) Tom Friedman explained on a late night TV show that the reason CO2 warms the earth is that it absorbs sunlight, that is, visible light.
Sorry, Tom: Just exhale. See the CO2? Of course not. CO2 does not absorb visible light.
Tom, poor guy, when you were studying romantic novels or Asian history in college, I was in a high end course in optics and radiography. There the prof explained that sunlight warms the surface of the earth; then that surface radiates with Planck black body radiation; considering the temperature of the surface, that radiation is heavily out in the infrared, and CO2 absorbs in three narrow frequency bands out in the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule.
So, CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs some infrared from Planck black body radiation from the surface. Thus, CO2 is called a greenhouse gas, although, with the roof, a greenhouse works in a significantly different way.
Well water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, and clouds readily absorb a lot radiation, both infrared and visible, from the earth and also directly from the sun. If you want to think about a biggie greenhouse gas, think about water vapor, not little ole' CO2.
Now, it's not at all clear if the infrared absorbed by CO2 would not also soon be absorbed by water vapor -- that's a darned tricky computation to do, especially since both CO2 and water vapor concentrations are not nearly uniform in the atmosphere, either horizontally or vertically. No, correction, it's not a "tricky" calculation; instead for now it's essentially an impossible calculation.
Really, net, we have next to nothing, next to zip, zilch, and zero ability, to say what an extra 10 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 would to the temperature of the earth. First-cut, intuitively the extra 10 ppm would warm the earth; so would lighting a match; we have pretty good shot saying what the heat energy would be from the match; we can do much less well estimating the effect of CO2. E.g., would the extra 10 ppm have any radiation to absorb, that is, not already absorbed by the rest of the CO2? Tough question to answer.
That in your statement CO2 warms the earth significantly or that significantly more CO2 would warm the earth significantly more, we just do NOT know that in any even half serious way. Sorry 'bout that.
For more, from the 800,000 years of ice core records from the Antarctic drillings, both temperature and CO2 varied, both up and down, significantly but (1) there is not even one case where significantly lower temperature was closely preceded by significantly CO2 and (2) the situation of higher temperature and higher CO2 is nearly the same, i.e., temperature went up but not from higher CO2 except maybe, in the last 800,000 years, for the first time in the last 100 years.
Next, for the past 20 years, CO2 has gone up (if believe the alarmists) but temperture has not.
Next, in the JPG I linked to, there were a lot of computer calculations to predict future temperatures considering the effects of CO2. Well, now we can check the predictions with measured values. Result: The only predictions that were at all accurate were the ones that predicted no or at most tiny increases in temperature. Nearly all the predictions were for much higher temperature and now are wildly wrong. So, we can't use such modelling to predict the effects of CO2.
And we have a recent test: There actually was some cooling from 1940 to 1970, but then CO2 was not decreasing. So, the cooling was not caused by CO2. So, CO2 is not the only cause of temperature change.
Since in the last 800,000 years temperature has gone up and down without CO2 going up and down first (maybe the last 100 years is an exception), there MUST be significant causes of temperature change that have nothing to do with CO2.
The simple observations here should settle the question for all current, practical purposes for any objective person who cares -- CO2 has essentially no effect on temperature. Sorry 'bout that.
So, concentrating on CO2, and shooting our economy in the gut to reduce CO2, look no better than the Mayans killing people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky.
So, what is going on here? Well, it's not science. In part it's fear, supersititon, and sacrifice as for the Mayans and others going back many thouands of years. In part it's an earth religion (uh, recall that Gore was a divinity student). Then, really, it's all driven by green, money that is.
The NYT? For decades now they have gotten lots of eyeballs and ad revenue raising the level of fear and, thus, getting an audience they can continue to stimulate, week by week.
Net, the whole thing about CO2 and climate is just a flim-flam, fraud, scam to trick taxpayers into having the US Federal Government spend money for nothing except to line the pockets of Musk, various wind and solar people, etc.
Just where did I lose you? It's totally simple -- it's just same song and second verse of the Mayans pouring blood on a rock.
> It has been proven without question that it is hotter now than it has been in 1000 years.
That's right and what I explained and what is in the NAS report I quoted.
Point: The current temperature is not unusual, and there are causes of a temperature this high that have nothing to do with CO2. So, that the current temperature, and the increase since the coldest of the Little Ice Age, are from CO2 are suspect.
So, there were climate models that tried to predict the effects of CO2. Well, as in the graph I showed, nearly all the models predicted temperatures way too high.
Point: The modelling efforts flopped.
First-cut Conclusion: We are really short on evidence that CO2 is the cause of any significant temperature increases, now or any time in the past 800,000 years of the Antarctica ice core data.
> This is a bullshit statement.
It's a perfectly solid statement: It's totally clear that temperature can go up without higher CO2. So, there are other causes. The leading candidate, over the short term, not the earth passing through some part of the galaxy over some many millions of years or some such, is sun spots. So, how to do something about sun spots? Hopeless. That was my point and is perfectly okay.
> The goal is to make sure we aren't turning the only planet we have into something either uninhabitable, or a nightmare.
There's not much chance of that, and there's essentially not even a clue that we are on the way to that. The energy in this debate is wild, irrational emotions, much like what drove the Myans to pour blood on a rock and have driven superstition and sacrifices for many thousands of years, those emotions now driven by quite a lot of US Federal money, money Trump is about to chop off.
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya:
Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars
(The Linda Schele Series in Maya and
Pre-Columbian Studies), ISBN-13
978-0292752269, University of Texas Press,
2000.
with
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for
the sun to move, according to Aztec
cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950
- 1982, 7:8)."
> If the temperatures continue to rise
Since when? That was my original point. Apparently for the past 20 years, temperatures have not risen, although CO2 has, at least the alarmists seem to say so. Maybe they are correct; maybe they just got their data from Hawaii with that data now corrupted by the volcano. Maybe the warmer surface temperatures of the Pacific around Hawaii caused out gassing of CO2 -- warmer water absorbs less CO2.
> Our current CO2 levels are orders of magnitude higher than anything found in the past.
An "order of magnitude" is a factor of 10. Your claim is tough to believe. IIRC we long were at about 280 parts per million of CO2 and, IIRC, from the alarmists, now are at about 400. That's not even a factor of 2. Moreover, we have no solid evidence that 400 ppm CO2 is actually warming the planet. E.g., the planet was this warm in the year 1000 when CO2 was not unusually high -- so, there are causes of warming other than CO2, and there's darned little reason to believe that CO2 is responsible for any warming now. Indeed, in the last 20 years, CO2 has been increasing but temperature has not. Indeed, from 1940 to 1970, CO2 increased but temperature declined a little showing that higher CO2 does not always lead to higher temperatures.
Net, the evidence is that CO2 has had little or nothing to do with the planet getting warmer, ever in the past 800,000 years of the Antarctica ice core data.
> High levels of CO2 have been linked with paleo level rising temperatures in the past
No, not really: From the 800,000 year data, none of the significantly higher temperatures were preceded by significantly higher CO2. Yes, after temperatures went up from whatever causes, not CO2, about 800 years later CO2 went up -- presumably from more biological activity from higher temperatures. That's your "linked".
> The earth is warming at an accelerating rate
What rates? Since when? Compared with what? As in the NAS reference I gave, the temperature now is not unusually high, is about the same as in the year 1000, is cooler than in the Medieval Warm Period, and has not increased at all in the past 20 years. I see no "accleration".
> You chose to highlight the years from 1940-1970. This isn't a discussion about the natural oscillations in weather. This about the proven sharp increase in temperatures as it compares to on a paleo scale.
Right, there are, call it, "natural oscillations," and maybe count
the cooling from 1940 to 1970 as part of that. So, we get two conclusions: (A) Then CO2 was higher than before (due to WWII, etc.) but the higher CO2 did not cause warming. (B) There are causes of cooling other than lower CO2; CO2 is not the only cause of temperature changes; so, we are not at all sure that the temperature now is from CO2.
> paleo scale
Huh? The usual claim is that higher CO2 now is driving temperatures higher now, and we need to cut back on human sources of CO2 now. Paleo is not part of that argument. And, to shoot down that argument, CO2 levels seem (the alarmists claim) to be at about 400 parts per million now and maybe increasing, but we're not seeing higher temperatures and have not for 20 years. So, where are the higher temperatures now from the higher CO2 now? My conclusion: CO2 has next to nothing to do with temperature, and we can forget about CO2.
> This article did not mention CO2, sin, greed, or corruption.
That's what the article is really about; the article is a manipulation, trying to sell band instruments and uniforms because of the threat of a pool table in town. So, the Music Man mentioned only the pool table. Well, what he was really interested in was selling some band stuff, taking the money, and getting out of town.
Trust me: The article is about CO2 and then reducing CO2 and then emphasizing renewables and then wind and solar and then batteries and then the money -- big subsidies. In the end it's about the money, e.g., the $1 B or so a year in research grants, the $1 B or so to Musk, forcing utility companies to accept unstable wind and solar power they very much do not want, etc. It's now a Green Glob, a big industry, all based on US Federal money from scaring the taxpayers.
> Global warming doesn't cause acidic oceans.
The claim is that CO2 in the water makes the water more acidic, causes acidic oceans.
> Maybe I missed it, so feel free to pull out some choice quotes.
The whole article is FUD in the sense that it's propaganda pushing the claim that CO2 from human activities is about to ruin the planet -- the sky is falling.
> The new climate denier stance is that you can't prove 100% without a doubt that it's human activity. The past decade has ended the "Is the temperature really increasing" debate.
Again, the temperature hasn't been increasing for 20 years, and now it's just where is was in year 1000 and, thus, not new or unusual and need not have been caused by CO2 since the temperature in year 1000 wasn't.
> denier stance
I don't know what that is; I'm just explaining what's totally clear. I'm not part of any group on climate; I'm certainly not being paid. Here I'm just trying to push back against propaganda.
I've here, now done my best to slap down the NYT propaganda and need to get back to my startup.
"It's now a Green Glob, a big industry, all based on US Federal money from scaring the taxpayers."
You're willing to credulously state this kind of wild conspiracy theory -- as if a "Green Glob" of deceptive scientists is a simple explanation for everything we observe -- CO2, glaciers, temperatures, ocean changes -- but also willing to ignore the very solid science in, for example, the IPCC AR5 report? And to spend many paragraphs denouncing an NYT story for being the kind of fluffy stuff ("polar bears") that you can't be bothered to take seriously?
The serious stuff is out there if you cared to look.
Its funny, several years ago when climate deniers were generally still in the full denial stage - ie saying the earth wasn't warming - I remember thinking how the evidence was going to become undeniable at some point even by first hand observation (I understand that that is actually not possible, but that it can drive perception and openness to the idea that the earth is warming) and how deniers would have to retreat ever further to state that humans are not the cause, I never thought that would happen so fast.
Is there a word for this, when a point of view is continually challenged and disproved but rather than accepting another point of view, the holders of this position just adapt their reasoning and continue on as if they always held their current position? It reminds me of so many types of arguments but I feel the need to have a specific term to describe it. It reminds me of contrived inductive arguments attempting to hold doggedly onto the geocentric model of the solar system[1].
I think you could sum it up as this situation: When you have to evolve your position over and over in the light of overwhelming evidence that makes you no longer able to persuade any others to your way of thinking, but with each new iteration of your position you hold it with absolute confidence despite having been proven wrong again and again.
This is distinct from a rational view where you allow evidence and reasoning to inform your decision because people who do this don't change their actual position, they just cherry-pick their rational, and it has nothing to do with being disproved but instead the perception of others and your ability to persuade them. If they could continue to make the argument that the world is not warming they would never bother to change it. They only evolve as a means of the survival of their position.
It reminds me of how the catholic church "evolves", subsequent generations of clergy might hold some truths to be unquestionable while choosing to disregard the truths of their predecessors as the perceptions of their followers change as a means of survival. Demonizing homosexuals is just not sustainable and the church will evolve so as to not alienate their customers, but then still demand to be taken seriously on any number of other topics with seemingly no awareness of the contradiction.
Not quite what you are asking, but related, is the idea of evaporative cooling of beliefs, a selection effect where over time the more objective and rational holders of a belief are persuaded by the evidence that their belief is incorrect, and those who continue to cling to the belief become a progressively smaller group who are increasingly uninterested in rational argument or scientific evidence. This results in the group arguments becoming progressively more shrill and incoherent.
>Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001.
How do you claim we are at the same temperature as the year 1000 and also claim temperature readings from the late 1800's are innacurate and can't be trusted? Also, what does comparing a similar temperature reading from a specific year in the past prove? It is arbitrary and without context.
What a fantastic idea, maybe someone should get on that? Of course I'm being sarcastic since there are many people doing that and I would provide some resources if I thought any measurement would be up to your high (perfect) standards.
