Obama Addresses Guvs on Global Warming

"Catastrophic AGW is a political debate, the science was abandoned long ago."

Try again, Woody, because it is you who are out of your league. No credible climatologist disagrees with the long range predictions or the effects of increasing CO2 emissions by a third in the last century. Any sophomore math student can explain why using force models can't forecast precise events and any sophomore chemistry student can explain Le Chatelier's Principle to you.

The problem is not a single predicted event but the observable acceleration in the data and the effect of that in the models. Glacial melting is normal. Glaciers are melting at a rate faster than anytime in the last 5000 years (see World Glacier Monitoring Service records). The amount of snow falling has been reduced by a global temperature increase and it has fallen below the replacement rate.

Sorry Woody, but there isn't enough space here to explain non-linear dynamic systems to you, but the sudden acceleration onset means a forcing factor or several small ones coupled (positive feedback with multiple inputs to the same value) have kicked into high gear. Whether it is the methane released from the permafrost or the carbon cycle sources such as reductions of the Amazon rain forest, the effects are real, observable, and predictable over short enough ranges to tell us we make our moves now or consign our grandchildren to the pain.

Sorry Ryan, len and others. On this subject you're way out of your league. Unfortunately the big loser in the catastrophic, man-made global warming debate is the scientific process itself. I challenge you to do what I did a few years ago and ask yourself a few questions (especially you, Ryan, because I feel you're a very bright young man):

1) How does one take the earth's temperature?

2) How does one determine how warm/cold the earth was with any degree of accuracy before the days of temperature measuring instuments?

3) Why would NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have more faith in an incomplete system of disparate, unorganized, ground based weather stations across the globe, prone to human error, siting issues, decay, etc. to collect temperature data than a satellite based system (MSU)?

4) How much have sea levels risen in the past 100 years?

5) What is the current extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice compared to average values over the last 30 years?

6) How well do the Global Climate Models (GCMs) perform when provided real world data from years past to predict the current climate?

7) What would happen to the global climate if we did indeed reduce our carbon emissions to 1990 levels, or even 1950 levels? Be specific.

Try to get your answers from sites other than Realclimate.com, sponsored by none other than Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and other Hockey Team members. If you stick to the science, there is absolutely no way anyone can definitively say the current warming over the last century or so, about 1 deg F., is unprecedented, catastrophic or the result of mankind's influence.

Switching to the political front of this debate, and that's really what's driving this issue, a few more questions.

1) What is the IPCC? Is it a scientific body or a political one? Have you read their reports, like the AR4? I have, and would be happy to debate any section with anyone.

2) Why did Al Gore turn down the Climate Czar (perfect name!) position? I'll give you a hint: Global Investment Management.

3) Who wins and who loses politically by the implementation of an aggresive climate change agenda?

4) How many nations have upheld their Kyoto treaty pledges?

Also, the fruitless cap-and-trade system adopted by the EU is already being abandoned there. The carbon credits issued to energy providers are already worthless on the open market.

I know I'll be labeled a denier and flat-earther, and that's fine. Ad hominem attacks have no place in science. Catastrophic AGW is a political debate, the science was abandoned long ago.

"If you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer." - Stevie Wonder

What a relief to have an administration that's willing to rely on science and intellectual curiosity instead of superstition and religious pandering.

The pagans are restless mommie earth is on fire.

President-elect Obama was very explicit in his intention to implement a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce CO2 emissions, with an 80% reduction goal by 2050, and it should be mentioned that John McCain also deserves credit for supporting cap-and-trade. To me, these developments are a clear sign of how far the world, following the universal lead of science, has moved past arguing whether CO2 reduction is necessary, and is discussing how to accomplish it. It's probably unrealistic to expect that all voices resisting a transition from fossil fuels to an economy reliant on renewable energy will immediately fall silent, but those of us who want our voices heard rather than ignored would be wise to engage in the discussion of carbon remediation options. The upcoming meeting in Poland will be another important step, although it's regrettable that China will not be participating from what I understand. Even so, China has already begun to match rhetoric with some constructive actions to reduce the magnitude of its CO2 emissions while it continues to promote its industrialization efforts, and its desire to receive help from the West in implementing carbon control.technologies deserves a favorable response from the industrialized nations.

Fred Moolten

There was a time when human beings were minor players in the ecology of the planet. Not any longer.

And just a comment on global warming in particular.

There was a time when the entire northern United states was covered in glaciers. Those glaciers melted, for that to have happened there had to be "global warming". But humans had nothing to do with it.

Now show me anything, any reduction in ice caps or glaciers that can even come close to the melting of glaciers covering the northern United states?

So, why is it that people act like the world is ending, when we see much smaller changes in the global ice and snow?

We are looking at small changes and screaming that the world is ending, when we know for a fact that huge changes in glacier coverage occured without any help from humans!

So why is it that a glacier covering the Northern United states melting is a natural event, yet much smaller changes in glaciers has to be caused by humans and signals the end of world?

On animal extinction. 90% of all forms of life to have evolved on earth are now extict, with little help from man.

Extinction is a natural part of elvolution. But it seems humans think that the world is somehow supposed remain in a way that we dedice it should, even though we can see from history that the one thing the earth never does is remain as it is.

I think this is more about people thinking that they are so unique, that they are the center of nature and that everything should remain as we want it; and also that if it does not, it must be due to us.

Man once thought he was the center of the universe. I think some have found a new way to once agian think that!

Now, unless I am wrong, Obama cap and trade plan will result in higher electric bills, gasoline costs and pretty much higher costs for anything sold or made by any companyt that uses electricity or ships a product.

I wonder if all the people who voted for Obama have considered this. I am not sure many have. I think many assume that that will "get something" from Obama, not that they will be asked to actually pay for things.

But, when they get their post cap and trade electric bills, they may be in for an awakening!

"I hate to tell you, len. But HOPE based on things that arent true is not real useful."

Do the basic science. Despite everything you think you know from the tea leaves of a little over a hundred years of data, basic science tells you you cannot pump that much carbon dioxide into the air and not change the balance.

The data is just that: data. Data are not facts. They are samples in some time series. Data has to fit a model to be of any predictive benefit and the model has to account for short term forced couplers (short term forces with noticeable effects that are not relevant over the long term of the model). Any sober person looking at the problem of anthropogenic forcing understands that short predictions are meaningless. It is only a longer series that reveals the patterns. The single events are meaningless.

Global warming is real. Understand it or get out of the way of those who do and will be able to do something about it. Your children's children will thank you.

For years now, Big Oil has sponsored a multi-million dollar propoganda war against science on this issue. As a result there are many people, including some legislators, who "know" global warming is a myth, just as they "know" that evolution is a lie and being gay is a choice.

It's a fact of life; you can't use science to prove anything to a person who doesn't have both the capacity and the desire to understand science. The best you can do is counter their misstatements and try to keep them out of public office.

Funny, isn't it, how some of the very forces responsible for the denial of global warming are in the process of planning shipping routes through the Arctic Ocean once the ice cap melts?

The same people who swear global warming isn't real are the same people who swear Iraq had WMDs.

If the science is beyond dispue, why must Doktor Hansen make up data?

How about we clean up the earth for our own health and not focus on global warming. I am more concerned about my environment with things like clean drinking water and clean air to breath. Don't muddy the water with something that can't be proven. We know bad air and bad water is bad for our health. Lets focus on things we know for sure and have hard evidence about. This global warming thing just makes things worse and waste more time on the road to the future. Wake up people this is all about politics.

"U.S. Annual Temperature timeseries

The last eight 5-year periods (2002-2006, 2001-2005, 2000-2004, 1999-2003, 1998-2002, 1997-2001, 1996-2000, 1995-1999), were thewarmest 5-year periods (i.e. pentads) in the last 112 years of national records, illustrating the anomalous warmth of the last decade. The 9 th warmest pentad was in the 1930s (1930-34), when the western U.S. was suffering from an extended drought coupled with anomalous warmth. The three warmest years on record are 1998, 2006 and 1934. In 1998, the record warmth was concentrated in the Northeast as compared with the Northwest during 1934. In 2006, much above average temperatures were present across most of the U.S. The West Coast and parts of the Ohio Valley and Southeast were above average. No state was near or below average for 2006."

The lesson as always?

"According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, in the past 50 years, the western Antarctic peninsula has undergone the biggest temperature increase on Earth: up .9 degree Fahrenheit, or .5 degree Celsius, in each of the past five decades."

Scientists have analysed more than 100 years of temperatures from the Arctic and 50 years in the Antarctic and they have discovered without humans the polar temperature would not be rising.

It had already been confirmed that our modern way of living is affecting wildlife, humans, the size of the ice sheets and global sea levels in continents around the world.

But until now it could not be proven that human life is hitting Antarctica.

Dr Alexey Karpechko, head of the unit that carried out the research, said: "Especially in the Arctic, warming has been observed for a while. Many people were thinking it was to do with human activity, but nobody formally attributed it to that before."

"I like it when these people claim that some other past years were warmer than today."

So what are we discussing here? "GLOBAL WARMING"?? Sounds to me that the globe should be warming. Seems the 1930's was the warmest on record. But I am not allowed to state the past and the facts involved in it? Seems the ice shelf is not down to Kentucky anymore? Wonder how that happened without natually warming events. Now they say the earth is cooling, but how is that possible in "GLOBAL WARMING"?? I also haven't heard of anyone complaining about the sea levels either. Lets get some measurements on that why we are at it. So whats the rise so far? I want facts people, not just some hypothetical analysis from a scientist that has a "ideaology" just like you and me. It wasn't too long ago that scientist claimed another ice age. Talk about bi-polar.

"D, check this out from earlier this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — New measurements show the ice in West Antarctica is thickening, reversing some earlier estimates that the sheet was melting."

That article is from January of 2002.

The lesson as always?

D, check this out from earlier this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — New measurements show the ice in West Antarctica is thickening, reversing some earlier estimates that the sheet was melting.

Your extremest friend

D, I dont understand what you mean that you would rather be lied to by "experts" than die with ideologues. Who says you have to die, just because global warming might or might not be true?