climate change and how the left has been misleading public

[HIGHERBEAM]

Anniversaries are always a fairly arbitrary (yet media friendly) reason for discussing any subject. But given the fact that some people, such as the folk at RealClimate, are already "celebrating" the 35th anniversary of the coining of the term "global warming", which is marked this Sunday, it seems as good a time as any to assess whether the term is still fit for purpose.

Names are important (just witness the "sceptic" vs "denier" hoo-ha), so it does seem a valid question to ask. I strongly doubt whether Wally Broecker realised that when his 1975 Science paper was titled "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" he knew that the term would go on to gain such international traction.

I doubt, therefore, that he gave it much thought whether it would withstand the rigours of intense scrutiny and debate that it would attract over the coming decades. (Some of the comments beneath the RealClimate piece do note that other earlier papers used the term "global warming trend", such as this one from 1961.)

The term is still near-universally used in the US, whereas "climate change" is more commonly used in the UK. I'm not too sure why this should be the case but it seems likely that James Hansen's use of the term "global warming" during his famous 1988 testimony to the Senate influenced the US media, and perhaps Margaret Thatcher's use of 'climate change' in her famous 1989 speech did the same here). But the two terms are largely interchangeable in common discussion, even though climate scientists will rightly argue there are subtle, but important distinctions.

One often-heard criticism is that "climate change" was invented by "warmists" to hide a perceived inconvenient truth that global temperatures aren't actually warming. In other words, "climate change" is a clever sleight of hand that acts as a catch-all for a bevy of climactic phenomena. This ignores the inconvenient truth that the term "climate change" actually pre-dates "global warming". After all, the full title of Broecker's paper is "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"

There's a nicely turned history of the two terms' usage here on the Nasa website written by Erik Conway, a historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. It includes a paragraph on how, in the 1970s, the term "inadvertent climate modification" was common parlance. Thankfully, this was abandoned in 1979 when the National Academy of Science published its first decisive study of carbon dioxide's impact on climate and chose to adopt the terms we still use today:

In place of inadvertent climate modification, Charney [MIT's Jule Charney, the report's chairman] adopted Broecker's usage. When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used "global warming." When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used "climate change." Within scientific journals, this is still how the two terms are used.

There have been some subtle tweaks made over the years, though. For example, on the blogosphere in particular, you will often see "AGW" used as shorthand, which adds the all-important clarifying prefix "Anthropogenic" to Global Warming.

There are also some prominent voices in the climate debate who do not particularly like the terms "global warming" or "climate change" because they don't exude the urgency and reality of the subject they describe. For example, James Lovelock prefers the term "global heating", whereas George Monbiot has argued that the term "climate breakdown" is a more accurate description.

Equally, on the other side of the fence, there are those who dismissively label the subject – or, rather, what they see as the mainstream reaction to the subject - as the "climate con", "climate hoax", "climate alarmism" or "climatism".

Personally, I've never much taken to the term "global warming" but with "climate change". I think we've reached a point now when we all know what we are talking about, even though the world will always be populated by the predictable pedants who love to crow that "the climate has always changed" when they know full well that what is being discussed is anthropogenic climate change. But, more importantly, to change the name now to something entirely new would only feed those conspiratorial minds that believe "climate change" is being intentionally used in some quarters in order to usurp "global warming", in the way a corporation might undergo a rebranding to help dissociate itself from a previous mishap.

Corporations will always cry that they haven't got the money to change their manufacturing practices but they can find the money to mount huge advertising budgets saying that global change is a myth and as such does not need any action taken.

Global warming was around in the 10th to 14th century when the the start of the industrial revolution was just starting,they had just learnt how to smelt copper,iron and other metals and were putting these in to mass production and emitting huge amounts of polutants into the atmosphere causing massive damage,the mini ice age can be explained away because the world went into a depressed state so factories shut down.

Copenhagen did not shut out any oppossing view scientists,they just failed to turn up.

[Super Nova]

Lefties are on the rise and use anything to push their socialist views.

No one can prove that global warming, if it is happening, hat a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet lefty politicians and the lefty elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Utter bull shit.

I imagine that in the not–too–distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool—as it did during much of the past century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about.

In short, it is all scare mongering. The left are leading with an agenda to control the behaviour of the people of the world. Reduce human productivity, change ecconomies, hold us back rather let us progress.

We need to have more faith in our ability to adapt and eventually control the planet. If we have a problem we will solve it over time. Just running around like chicken little is nonsense.

[Super Nova]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... ntury.html

Rainforests currently hold more than half of all the plant and animal species on Earth.

However, scientists say the combined effects of climate change and deforestation may force them to adapt, move, or die.

The Amazon Basin alone could see changes in biodiversity for 80 per cent of the region.

Greg Asner, of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in California, who led the research, said it was the first study yet to show the world's natural ecosystems will undergo profound changes.

He explained: "This is the first global compilation of projected ecosystem impacts for humid tropical forests affected by these combined forces.

"For those areas of the globe projected to suffer most from climate change, land managers could focus their efforts on reducing the pressure from deforestation, thereby helping species adjust to climate change, or enhancing their ability to move in time to keep pace with it.

"On the flip side, regions of the world where deforestation is projected to have fewer effects from climate change could be targeted for restoration."

Asner and his team made their findings by looking at global deforestation and logging maps from satellite imagery, and high-resolution data from 16 climate-change projections worldwide.

They then ran scenarios on how different types of species could be geographically reshuffled by 2100.

The results showed only 18 per cent- less than a fifth – to 45 per cent – less than half- of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in tropical rainforests may remain as we known them today.

Daniel Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, which studies climate change in Massachusetts, said: "This study is the strongest evidence yet that the world's natural ecosystems will undergo profound changes including severe alterations in their species composition through the combined influence of climate change and land use.

"Conservation of the world's biota, as we know it, will depend upon rapid, steep declines in greenhouse gas emissions."

Here they go again, blaming global warming when it is clear to me that if they did not cut down the trees then the lose of species would be very little. It is the clearing of the forest that is main cause. Just for good measure the leftards add "global warming" into the head-line just to push their agenda. A little warming as has occured many times in the past did not devistate the rain forests. In some places the change was done over a period of time to allow the animal to adapt. the clear felling of entire forests, that is no tree for the poor buggers to live in, on or under is the real reason they just decide to turn up their toes.

Everything that changes in our environment has xxxxx and global warming as the cause. What utter bull shite. xxxxxxx is the real reason and the leftards just throw in global warming for good measure.

Stop cutting down all the trees if you give a shit about the animals. Why isn't there a real global movement that is effective to stop this... why because it is too hard to address, let's pick global warming because it sounds more scary and can make everyone feel bad about it.

I want the whole world to have a continuous summer break. Is that too much to wish for. At least it will be free of those pecsky animal from the rainforest to piss me orf.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Higherbeam's statement to start the debate.

Same time tommorrow and we will debate the climate change and how the left has been misleading the public like chicken little .When there are oppossing views they(left) come out and attack.The earth has been having hot and cold periods all its limited life and to come out and say because we live on this planet we are causing massive damage when opposing data says different

[HIGHERBEAM]

Are the UNFCCC negotiations trying to establish a ‘World Government’?No. Some commentators claim that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiating text in the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009 proposed a World Government, but that the proposal was dropped due to adverse publicity. This is incorrect.

The UNFCCC negotiations are highly transparent. All negotiating text is available on the UNFCCC website

One country (Tuvalu) refers to ‘government’ in their proposal for a financial mechanism (the word appears twice in paragraph 38). The term is used to refer to a governing body for the proposed mechanism. This has not been agreed by other Parties and is unable to proceed without agreement.

There are no proposals under the UNFCCC to create a World Government.Being a Party to the UNFCCC does not undermine Australia’s national sovereignty. The UNFCCC has no international authority to ‘govern’ Australia. The text of the UNFCCC reaffirms ‘the principle of sovereignty of States in international cooperation to address climate change’.

Is it true that there is a draft climate change treaty?
No. There are currently a number of negotiating texts but these are not a 'draft treaty'. The texts contain proposals put forward by countries, even if a proposal is only supported by one country and opposed by others. They are a compilation of different views and are not agreed.

A number of countries have submitted ideas about what a draft treaty might look like, but none of these are currently under negotiation.

All negotiating texts are available on the UNFCCC website

Is the Copenhagen Accord a weak outcome?
The Copenhagen Accord is a welcome step forward on climate change action. The Accord, strongly supported by both developed and developing countries, is the first time there has been agreement to keep global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius, and to take responsibility for action to realise this target. A transparent system to track progress was also agreed, which is key to getting the environmental outcome we all need.

Tackling climate change requires sustained ambition over the long-term—the Accord is one important step in the right direction. Australia formally registered its support for the Accord at Copenhagen and is encouraging its fast and full implementation.

Countries have been invited to submit information on their emission reduction targets and mitigation actions pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord by 31 January 2010. Australia made its submission to the UNFCCC secretariat on 27 January 2010. It is expected that target setting under the Accord is likely to be an iterative process and Australia will continue to work with others to maximise the level of global ambition.

More needs to be done to take international cooperation further. Australia supports continued negotiations in the UNFCCC to deliver further climate change actions. Australia looks to the negotiations on future action to produce a legally-binding agreement.

The text of the Accord can be found on the UNFCCC website

Is climate change real?
There is clear evidence that our climate is changing, largely due to greenhouse gases caused by human activities. When scientists talk about climate change they mean warming of the climate system as a whole, which includes the atmosphere, the oceans, and the cryosphere (ice, snow and frozen ground). The observational evidence clearly indicates that the climate system is continuing to warm, including warming oceans and melting snow and ice, both of which contribute to rising sea levels.

The Fourth Assessment Report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, states that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and that ‘most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’.

In other words, there is overwhelming evidence for human-made global warming.

Climate change is not just about global warming. The science indicates that the climate will be altered in many other ways. For example, there will be changes in rainfall patterns and ocean currents, changes to the intensity and frequency of extreme events such as storms, droughts and floods, rising global sea level and ocean acidification.

Has there been a decade and a half with no ‘statistically significant’ global warming?
Statistically significant trends cannot be determined from 15 years of data. The IPCC specifies that 25 years is the minimum period required to determine a statistically significant trend. Even so, the linear trend for the last 15 years has been one of warming.

The current observed global temperature changes are consistent with the climatic warming trend of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade predicted by the IPCC. Using NASA data, even the 11-year period (cited by some commentators as evidence against warming) starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cooler 2008, still shows a warming trend of 0.11 degrees Celsius per decade.

The World Meteorological Organization has found that 2000-2009 was the world’s warmest decade on record, warmer than the 1990s which in turn was warmer than the 1980s. In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has found each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the preceding decade. The Earth has warmed by around 0.74 degrees Celsius from 1906-2005. This is a statistically significant climatic change.

Are warming rates below the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections?
No. Carbon dioxide levels, global average surface air temperature and sea-level change are all tracking within IPCC projections.

Are the IPCC findings based on a show of hands among political representatives?
No. The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC provides a rigorous assessment of the published and peer-reviewed research on climate change and was compiled by 1,250 expert authors from over 130 countries.

The Report is based on a range of scientific evidence for climate change including observed increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

All IPCC reports are subject to extensive expert and government review. The role of governments in the review process is to assist in ensuring the reports comprehensively cover scientific sources and are relevant to the needs of decision makers.

Has a natural reduction in cloud cover caused the warming from the mid 1980s rather than CO2?
The available evidence, as presented in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, indicates that greenhouse gases emitted by human activities have contributed more to warming over the last fifty years than any natural source. Studies have been unable to find any natural causes that explain the scale of observed warming.

Does climate change represent a market failure?
A ‘market failure’ in this context refers to the fact that, until now, no one has had to pay for the damage inflicted on our global climate from carbon pollution.

If polluters do not pay directly for the cost of their pollution, that cost is passed indirectly onto everyone else (for example, in the form of poor air quality or in this case, global warming). That is why the Government seeks to introduce an emissions trading scheme, to ensure that polluters take the whole cost of their pollution into account. This will encourage them to move towards low-emissions alternatives overtime.

Is the cost of reducing emissions (mitigation) worth it? Is waiting and adapting more cost-effective?
Even small changes in global average temperature have significant and costly impacts. Regardless of future efforts to reduce emissions, the level of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere means that some impacts cannot be avoided. Today we are already beginning to feel the economic and environmental costs of inaction on climate change.

The Government’s support of global action to reduce emissions is based on the science that indicates that stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm) or lower will reduce the risks of severe climate change, and support our aim of limiting the average global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. At a 2 degree temperature rise we will certainly need to adapt.

Without effective global action on climate change, temperatures in Australia could rise by around 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The results would be catastrophic.

Food production from our farms would decline. We would experience more bushfires and severe weather events that threaten the livelihoods of our communities. Human health would be at risk from the spread of disease. And the Great Barrier Reef is under serious threat as increasing sea temperatures cause coral bleaching and as the ocean acidifies. Some of these impacts we simply cannot adapt to.

As set out in a number of authoritative resources (such as the Stern Review and the Garnaut Review), the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action now. We need to reduce emissions so that our aim of limiting average global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees remains achievable. The more there is delay in real action to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the harder it becomes to achieve this goal.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Higherbeam's statement to start the debate.

Same time tommorrow and we will debate the climate change and how the left has been misleading the public like chicken little .When there are oppossing views they(left) come out and attack.The earth has been having hot and cold periods all its limited life and to come out and say because we live on this planet we are causing massive damage when opposing data says different

Pig's arse!
Fact is, while heating and cooling are perfectly natural, what is not natural is that we have sped the heating process up 55 times faster than what is typically natural.
Now we could place fines/levies/taxes on carbon (CO2) emmissions, and the vege nazis want the same applied to methane emmissions to drive the price of meat up on the grounds methane (CH4) is 24 times worse as a Green-house gas (GHG) than CO2. Well that's just fine so long as we also apply the same fine/levy/tax on Nitrous oxide (N2O) to make vegetables prohibitively expensive on the grounds N2O is 250 times worse as a GHG than CO2.
Of course the fine/levy/tax should be proportional on both volume and potency.

Truth is nothing we do will make any difference now.
In 2007 the Russian and Swedish navies found massive areas in arctic seas where thawing methane clathrate is bubbling to the surface.
Y'see the frozen CO2 thawing means we have passed the tipping point into runaway global warming.
No matter what we do climate extremes are going to become increasing more intense.
I reckon the floods will come much faster and higher than any so called expert is willing to admit.
And I think the characters involved with the construction of the 'Doomsday seed vault' 130 metres above sea level on an arctic island have an inkling as well.

[HIGHERBEAM]

Heretic I am impressed that you understood the subject matter let alone post,well done.

[Super Nova]

[Chnaging sides again]
- Permian Period (286-248 million years ago)
- Terrestrial faunal diversification occurred in the Permian
- 90-95% of marine species became extinct in the Permian

I saw a special last week that scared the shit out of me with regards to humanities ignorance.

It speculated on the causes of the permian extinstion, the greatest extinction in the history ofthe world. It concluded it was 2 fold. It conclused that it required an average warming of the Earth of 10 degees C.

Part 1. Permian mass extinction as a result of basaltic lava eruptions in Siberia. These volcanic eruptions were large and sent a quantity of sulphates into the atmosphere. Evidence in China supports that these volcanic eruptions may have been silica-rich, and thus explosive, a factor that would have produced large ash clouds around the world.

The problem was that the volanic event at best could only account for a 5 degrees C increase in temperature. No where near enough to account for the extinction level.

Part 2. Once the Earth has risen by 5 degrees it set off another event. The massive release of methane. methane that is stored frozen and stored in the see was released in huge quanities. Methane is a much greater greenhoase gas. Then we had a run away green house event and that added another 10 degrees C.

This is the risk to the planet. This will be the result of us not addressing the warming that we are creating. When we reach the tipping point there will be very little we can do except die.

[HIGHERBEAM]

Changing sides
A wide expanse of Arctic Ocean seabed is bubbling methane into the atmosphere. This is the first time that the ocean has been found to be releasing this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere on this scale.

The discovery will rekindle fears that global warming might be on the verge of unlocking billions of tonnes of methane from beneath the oceans, which could trigger runaway climate change. The trouble is, nobody knows if the Arctic emissions are new, or indeed anything to do with global warming.
Between 2003 and 2008 Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and colleagues collected 5000 samples of seawater over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, the world's largest area of continental shelf, and measured the levels of methane at different depths. They also measured levels of the gas in the atmosphere above the shelf in 2006.

The team located more than 100 hotspots where methane is leaking from seabed permafrost. Most of the water in the region had methane concentrations more than eight times the normal amount in the Arctic Ocean, and concentrations of the gas in the air above averaged four times the Arctic norm.

Straws in the wind?
The team used their measurements to calculate that the region is releasing about 7 million tonnes of methane a year – about 2 per cent of overall methane emissions to the atmosphere, half of which result from human activity.

That doesn't sound like much, but the fear is that as the Arctic warms, it could release more and more of the gas. Shakhova warns that the release of "only a small fraction of the methane held in the ice shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming".

Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, says the newly discovered emissions from the continental shelf appear to be "one of the largest known methane sources of the northern hemisphere".

Until now, stores of methane frozen in Arctic water and land appeared safe. But recent studies by Sergey Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in Russia and others have shown that emissions from thawing peat bogs in western Siberia are growing. The latest study adds evidence that the gas is slowly leaking from its frozen Arctic vaults.

Researchers have speculated that the Siberian emissions could explain an unexpected rise in concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, globally, over the past three years.

However, it is not clear whether the leakage is a new phenomenon. Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham, UK, reported 250 submarine methane hotspots off the Arctic islands of Svalbard last year, but did not determine whether they were affecting the atmosphere above. "The subsea permafrost has been degrading and leaking methane beneath for thousands of years," he told New Scientist.

He added that nobody knows how much of the recently detected methane releases are due to human influence on climate and that the fraction "is probably quite small".

Shakhova and her colleagues are calling for "urgent" investigations to determine whether the methane venting they have found is an ongoing phenomenon or signals the start of a larger release.

[Super Nova]

However, it is not clear whether the leakage is a new phenomenon. Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham, UK, reported 250 submarine methane hotspots off the Arctic islands of Svalbard last year, but did not determine whether they were affecting the atmosphere above. "The subsea permafrost has been degrading and leaking methane beneath for thousands of years," he told New Scientist.

He added that nobody knows how much of the recently detected methane releases are due to human influence on climate and that the fraction "is probably quite small".

Shakhova and her colleagues are calling for "urgent" investigations to determine whether the methane venting they have found is an ongoing phenomenon or signals the start of a larger release.

true but when we hit a certain temperature.... it will massively increase the release. that is the real concern. When this happened in the past.... it had very bad concequences for all life. Looking at hte last 1000s of years is no indication of the future in this circumstance. When we hit the trigger point.... we will all agree the lefies greenies were right.... but it could be too late.