http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/04/25...reut/index.html

Experts: Global warming behind 2005 hurricanes

MONTEREY, California (Reuters) -- The record Atlantic hurricane season last year can be attributed to global warming, several top experts, including a leading U.S. government storm researcher, said on Monday.

"The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change and it's no longer something we'll see in the future, it's happening now," said Greg Holland, a division director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Holland told a packed hall at the American Meteorological Society's 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology that the wind and warmer water conditions that fuel storms that form in the Caribbean are "increasingly due to greenhouse gases. There seems to be no other conclusion you can logically draw."

His conclusion will be debated throughout the week-long conference, as other researchers present opposing papers that say changing wind and temperature conditions in the tropics are due to natural events, not the accumulation of carbon dioxide emissions clouding the Earth.

Many of the experts gathered in the coastal city of Monterey, California, are federal employees. The Bush administration contends global warming is an unproven theory.

While many of the conference's 500 scientists seem to agree that a warming trend in the tropics is causing more and stronger hurricanes than usual, not all agree that global warming is to blame.

Some, like William Gray, a veteran hurricane researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, attributed the warming to natural cycles.

Gray said he believes salinity buildups and movements with ocean currents cause warming and cooling cycles. He predicted the Caribbean water will continue to warm for another five to 10 years, then start cooling.

More warming to come
Whatever the cause, computer projections indicate the warming to date -- about one degree Fahrenheit (half a degree Celsius) in tropical water -- is "the tip of the iceberg" and the water will warm three to four times as much in the next century, said Thomas Knutson, explaining projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.

Adam Lea, a postdoctoral student at Britain's University College London in Dorking, Surrey, presented research based on British, German, Russian and Canadian studies that concludes half of the increased hurricane activity in the tropics could be attributed to global warming.

Holland, director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division of the federal research center, said tropical storm anomalies in the 1940s and 1950s can be explained by natural variability.

But he said carbon dioxide started changing traceable patterns in the 1970s and by the early 1990s, the atmospheric results were affecting the storm numbers and intensities.

"What we're seeing right now in global climate temperature is a signature of climate change," said Holland, a native of Australia. "The large bulk of the scientific community say what we are seeing now is linked directly to greenhouse gases."

Hurricane Katrina, which tore onto the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts on August 29, was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in 77 years and the costliest ever, with property damages estimated at $75 billion.

This year, the weather service's Tropical Prediction Center expects more hurricanes than usual, but not as many as last year's record 14.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Thanks for the good information Earthmother. I am beginning to see the benefits of joining for sure!

I admit to not being well traveled in forums, (would I be a forumist or forumer?) Anyway my point is I have not seen enough of what has been said here at this website's forum or anyother for that matter to be informed enough to be fair or critical. BUT... I have gone to 2 of the 4 links under Watch the Trailer at
http://www.climatecrisis.net/
I have been to the youtube and Ifilm links and at both of those websites there is the opportunity to add a comment or join a forum to discuss An Inconvenient Truth.

Uhg!, Let me uncross my eyes while I shake off that memory. If anyone is looking for hard headed misinformed people in denial about Global Warming, you can get your fill of frustration there. Information like the kind that you just passed on would be thought of as more hype, part of some economic conspiracy, or just another chance to blame a storm on something other than a natural occurring climate cycle. Don't even think about the ammunition provided in there that would be all that was noted by nay sayers.

What I am seeing so far is that a lot of people speak of Global Warming in that light, a naturally occurring climate cycle. They are putting there foot down and I am getting the distinct impression that most of them are either "spinning" so they can skirt the truth or they are just ignorant of how much of the warming is due to our action in this world. In other words, I am beginning to see that the use of the term Global Warming is to some degree perpetuating the controversy. From now on I think Man Made Climate Change should be more in the forefront as part of that rhetoric. Man Made Global Warming or Man Made Climate Change resulting in Global Warming might spark just a few more smoldering brains that are sitting on the fence.

Logical explanations are given and received and no matter how logical they are they can be transformed as they pass through an individuals filter. When someone presents some logical gobblety-gook about Global Warming not being an important issue, some fence sitters are going to tumble. For every tumbled sitter we can say we are that much closer to the Tipping Point.

That there are scientists who contest that we are the cause must being doing there research in a vacuum known as "head up your ###(HUYA)". And that is just the kind of scientists George would recruit. Their previous qualifications are probably dog shows. "The Bush administration contends global warming is an unproven theory." That makes me feel like I am reading some historical record from 1900 about how man will never fly, except I could accept that position more readily given that era's level of technological sophistocation. I don't know if it has occurred to George but life after death is an unproven theory too, but apparently he believes that. Why does he waste time going to church? Is he afraid of something that has such a link to an unproven theory?

I think the real proof that polution has reeked such havoc on this world is the simple fact that so many people voted for Bush. Heck with global warming what about global sanity.

What Hurricanes?
Thisplanet

PLEASE JOIN THIS EFFORT - it costs nothing but a minute of your time
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/default.asp
By joining THE STOP GLOBAL WARMING VIRTUAL MARCH, we commit to each other that together, as our numbers grow, we will use our collective voices to demand that governments, corporations, and politicians take the steps necessary to stop global warming. Join this march today, and take the first step
and/or
http://www.petitiononline.com/drive55/petition.html
and/or
http://www.drive55.org/pn/index.php

Thanks for the links, thisplanet. I have signed the 55 mph petition (I remember when they did that in the 70s), and I have joined stopglobalwarming.org. Thanks for making us aware of these sites.

As for the dweebs on the climate crisis site and others who still insist that sunspots and cow farts are responsible for global warming and not man's activities, try to get a little perspective on the situation. The conservatives are out in force right now because of the new attention being focused on this issue. They hate Al Gore and all he stands for (as we hate Bush and all he stands for). They hate the idea that man might have to curb some of his destructive habits because they are arrogant and believe that man is the king of the universe and that all things in this universe were put here to serve mankind, rather than the other way around.

People like us think that humans are the stewards of our environment. We respect it, and we recognize the delicate position we occupy in the grand scheme of things. But people who are so up in arms about global warming's veracity want to be able to continue polluting and raping the earth for their own benefit. What--me curtail my activities? Not drive my V-8 SUV at 85 mph with one person in it and no intentions of going off-road? Not take my giant Winnebago on a cross-country vacation? Turn down my air conditioner? Turn down my heat? Use cloth diapers? Drink water from my tap instead of bottled water in throw-away plastic bottles? Go out of my way to recycle? Me? So these people will continue to say global warming is a figment of our imagination, that it stopped in 1998 (not), and that it's not being caused by man's activities.

According to them, we are tree huggers, to be written off as fringe lunatics. Well, they'll be getting their come-uppance soon enough. Gore's movie seems to be taking off like a rocket and is being well received. He has solid science backing him up. The scientists these days who claim that there is no global warming crisis are ones who are being funded by the oil companies. They are in the minority. This issue is real, and it is critical, and if we can just win back Congress and the White House, we'll have a chance to do something about it. And for a change, THEY will have to listen to US.

Also, thisplanet . . . when you encounter these A-Holes on these sites, refer them to the following article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3836693.html

May 2, 2006, 11:13PM

Study finds consensus on global warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
New York Times

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded Tuesday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate about global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

But White House officials said that though the finding was important, the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

The focus of the new federal study was conflicting records of atmospheric temperature trends. For more than a decade, scientists using different methods had come up with differing rates of warming at Earth's surface and in the midsection of the atmosphere, called the troposphere.

These disparities had been cited by a small group of scientists, and by the administration and its allies, to question a growing consensus among climatologists that warming from heat-trapping gases could dangerously heat Earth.

According to a news release issued by the Commerce Department and approved by the White House, the new study found that "there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere."

The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature in the last 50 years was the buildup of heat-trapping gases.

Of course, you'll notice that, even with this, the Bush administration is still dragging its feet and refusing to commit to doing something about the problem NOW. :rolleyes:

Very good to read the both of you, Karen/EM and thisplanet. I love this group of people! Just some silly thoughts here:

Denial about global warming is just a river in Egypt that has overflooded its banks due to the melting of the polar ice caps due to global warming.

Maybe we should call the neoCons "Climate Busters". Or even "Climate F*ckers".

I suppose this is one of the Canadian Right-Wing reporters Karl Rove has on the payroll! - Read This Article!

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.

The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.


Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

The great majority of reputable scientists are in agreement on the climate change we're experiencing and its causes. Obviously, there will always be some who disagree. But as Gore points out in "An Inconvenient Truth," 0% of the 800-and-some scientists (or was it 900?) in peer-reviewed journals disagreed with what he's saying. 0%.

That's hard to argue with.

"

Did they mention if there were millions of autos chugging away everyday, how many jet liners going back and forth, trucks, trains, ships, power companys, factories and a few billion people cashing in their carbon chips with everything from electric can openers to ionic air cleaners - uh 450 million years ago - did I miss that?

AND just how much of all those machines not only contribute particulates but have you ever noticed that exhaust is HOT!

Well, I found the same stuff By Tom Harris on the bike forum and found the following in reply.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER:
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes*

Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

References and Notes

1. A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
2. S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).
3. See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
4. J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
5. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
6. American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
7. American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
8. See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
9. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
10. This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.

10.1126/science.1103618

Did you actually read what you were quoting?

Yes - I have seen it before and read it before and read it again. I even know how they managed to get the CO2 levels from 450 million years ago. Research like that also tells us that such cold periods are preceded by a heat spike. What the ice core samples don't tell us is what the causes were for the evidence they glean from the 3 inch diameter samples. I am impressed with what they can determine from that research, but they are looking through less than a peep hole hundreds of millions of years back and only trying to piece that information into a puzzle that is made up of other pieces that are mostly theoretical.

It is very persuasive in the context as it is stated by Harris, but it is like trying to be convincing about an idea by arguing about the semantics, as are other critiques such as the glacier walls breaking off. 450 million years ago a lot of things were different and I would bet that the conditions that allowed the "absolute coldest period in the last half billion years" had a lot to do with a cloud cover that completely turned away the sun's heat (and it would be informative to keep that in mind while watching the Nova special "The Dimming Sun").

Gore is not giving us an in depth science lesson. He is not attempting to make us all worthy of a science degree. To cover every aspect of the truth and explain every distracter's hang up would require a lot more than a couple sequels. He is alerting us to a crisis. It is a very big world, but not big enough to withstand the abuse mankind, over 6 Billion strong, irresponsibly unleashes while most simply go about their innocent lives not giving much thought to their impact. It is simply naive to think we can add the pollutants to the environment on the scale that we do, a scale which will certainly increase with the addition of India and China's industrial revolution, while at the same time we whittle away at the world's rain forests which account for a full third of the oxygen that is put back into the mix. It is beyond me to imagine how or why this could be acceptable by any sane person.

I haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" yet. The soonest I can see it within 100 miles of where I live is June 23. I know I will be disappointed that it doesn't send every person home with an individual commitment to treat the environment better and that is because of reviews I have seen which focus on anything except the "moral crisis" that MAN MADE Climate Change is. Still, as far as I am concerned, my opinion is that Al Gore and Noah have this in common, the more people laugh at him then all the more people will die.

And my guess is I have said nothing to change your mind. I can't make you understand anymore than I could make you taste a banana by describing it. You have the ability to learn and that same ability can keep you from knowing the truth. It's up to you.