Global Warming Cont...

[randerizer]

Updated 7:15 AM on Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Scientist says public gets global warming

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press


SAN FRANCISCO - A top scientist in the study of climate change says she is optimistic about public understanding of the dangers of global warming.

"I'm incredibly encouraged," Susan Solomon beamed after speaking to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Solomon, a scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was instrumental in developing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released earlier this month in Paris.

That report reaffirmed ongoing global warming, said it is 90 percent likely to have been caused by human activity and added changes in rain and snowfall to the hotter climate expected with continuing change.

"Evidence of climate change is now unequivocal," she said.

Changes already under way will require adaptation in the short term, Solomon said, while efforts to reduce or reverse change will only occur on a long term.

"I am personally an optimist" about increased governmental and public understanding of the problem, Solomon said.

But, she added, "It is complicated. You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it."

She likened understanding of global warming to that of the ozone hole a few years ago. Once scientists were able to tell the story clearly, the public understood it, she said. Now science is on the same track with climate change.

Global warming has seen the planet's average temperature rise by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century, largely due to the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

"We are forcing the climate system in a new way, outstripping the sun," Solomon said.

Overall there are more warm nights and fewer cold ones, a change that affects crops and animals as well as people.

Detecting change can be difficult in one place, she said, because local changes one way or the other can vary widely from the average changes around the world.

"It requires you to think beyond your own back yard," she said.

Solomon discussed the climate change reported so far, noting that further studies due out in the spring will address the effects of the change and what actions could be taken to reduce those effects or slow or reverse change.

So now you expect the public opinion on global warming should affect my personal judgements as well?

[saltydawg]

So now you expect the public opinion on global warming should affect my personal judgements as well?

I really don't care. I do care about public opinion because their support will be necessary to make the changes necessary to reduce the dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere..

[randerizer]

I really don't care. I do care about public opinion because their support will be necessary to make the changes necessary to reduce the dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere..

your first credible comment of this thread.

[randerizer]

I really don't care. I do care about public opinion because their support will be necessary to make the changes necessary to reduce the dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere..

Out of curiosity, how many of the world's "experts" that currently support the notion of AGW would need to change their minds before you even began to question?

[saltydawg]

Out of curiosity, how many of the world's "experts" that currently support the notion of AGW would need to change their minds before you even began to question?

If Dawgbitten and Altadawg changed their minds about AGW, I would consider their arguments very carefully.

As for climate scientists changing their minds, they would have to present their reasons for doing so. In that regard, absolute numbers would not be as important as the soundness of their reasoning.

[randerizer]

If Dawgbitten and Altadawg changed their minds about AGW, I would consider their arguments very carefully.

As for climate scientists changing their minds, they would have to present their reasons for doing so. In that regard, absolute numbers would not be as important as the soundness of their reasoning.

So the fact that I, a scientist, have gone from indifferent to very skeptical, and I have presented sound scientific reasons, does not even lead you to delve into those reasons?

[saltydawg]

So the fact that I, a scientist, have gone from indifferent to very skeptical, and I have presented sound scientific reasons, does not even lead you to delve into those reasons?

I didn't know that you were a climate scientist. Does Dawgbitten and Altadawg know this?

BTW, my sister has a Ph.D. in microbiology from Boston University. She first learned of AGW in 1988 and didn't think it wa credible at that time. In 1998, she changed her mind and thinks that AGW is taking place. She is tenured professor at Goucher College in Baltimore.

What scientific field did you get your Ph.D.?

[randerizer]

I didn't know that you were a climate scientist. Does Dawgbitten and Altadawg know this?

BTW, my sister has a Ph.D. in microbiology from Boston University. She first learned of AGW in 1988 and didn't think it wa credible at that time. In 1998, she changed her mind and thinks that AGW is taking place. She is tenured professor at Goucher College in Baltimore.

What scientific field did you get your Ph.D.?

I've posted an article before that describes the general knowledge area of microbiologists relavent to the global warming debate. Generally, there is no background in a microbiology education for the broad understanding of mass transport, thermodynamics, etc. required to understand the carbon cycle or the reading of ice core samples. There is certainly valuable information in the field of microbiology with respect to the role of climate change on specific biological systems, but I seriously doubt there is the background from that field to establish the CAUSE of the climate change.

[GatorDawg]

What scientific field did you get your Ph.D.?

How about you? Because right now all I have read is some unknown education trying to tell chemical engineers they need to read a text book or read some more info on the subject. I don't intend to dive into this topic with you (not enough time with finals this week) but please tell me why anyone one here should listen to you when half your posts are "you need to read X article again."

[Dawgbitten]

The Cardinal has me convinced. It is all just hysteria. Nothing to see here. Just move along.

Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
Keeping a cool head amid warming hysteria
By CARDINAL GEORGE PELL
Opinion / Op Ed; Pg. 81

February 18, 2007 Global-warming doomsayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in central Queensland, then here in Sydney.
January also was unusually cool.
We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters, as some zealots have been presenting extreme scenarios to frighten us.
They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight-storey building, and the Amazon Basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and Greenland melts.
An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global-warming sceptics, and a US television correspondent compared sceptics to ''Holocaust deniers''.
A local newspaper editorial's complaint about the doomsayers' religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity.
Christians don't go against reason, although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace the probabilities.
What we were seeing from the doomsayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria -- semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.
I'm deeply sceptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence.
I would be surprised if industrial pollution and carbon emissions had no ill-effects at all.
But enough is enough.
A few fixed points may provide light on the subject.
We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history -- for example, the ice ages and Noah's flood, when human causation could only have been negligible.
Nor should it be too surprising to learn that during the past 100 years, the media has alternated between promoting fear of anew ice age and fear of global warming.
Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years.
We all know that a cool January doesn't mean much in the long run.
But neither does evidence based on only a few years.
Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations over limited periods and in a few places to misrepresent longer patterns.
Warming evidence is mixed and often exaggerated but can be reassuring.
Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one-fifth of a degree
Celsius per decade.
The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer, especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.
Britain's University of East Anglia climate research unit found global temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2005, and a NASA satellite recently found the southern hemisphere had not warmed in the past 25 years.
Is mild global warming a northern phenomenon?
We may have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg as large as an aircraft carrier off Dunedin, but we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.
The science is certainly more complicated than the propaganda.

[Dawgbitten]

or by dissolution into water and forming carbonic acid?

And that carbonic acid is doing what?

[Guisslapp]

And that carbonic acid is doing what?

Makes the coca-cola taste so good.

[Dawgbitten]

Interestingly, there was also a decrease in fossil fuel consumption relative to last January, as we had less need to heat our homes.

An anthropogenic feedback system?

Is this a serious question?

[Dawgbitten]

Have you been following this conversation? We have discussed how the warming is not the result of anthropogenic CO2 - the increase levels are due the natural carbon cycle. We have very little impact on anything. Plus, we don't even know there will be severe impacts if it does continue to warm.

We don't know if there will be severe impacts if it warms? Wow.

[Dawgbitten]

Wrong. The CO2 combines with water to create a sugar molecule and oxygen.

Yes. That is exactly what happens.