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Y2K and Warming

Posted By: Daniel Murphy
Date: Friday, 25 April 2008, at 2:05 p.m.

In Response To: Y2K and Warming (Bill Riles)

If the topic is climate change, then the opinions that count are certainly not mine, or those of the idiots who shout the loudest on talk radio. The opinions that matter are the opinions of climatologists, whose expertise is -- duh -- climate! I don't care what Rush Limbaugh says, or what Bill Riles says (which seems to be the same thing). I don't even care much what Chuck Bower -- an astrophysicist, not a climatologist -- says, except in the sense that Chuck, unlike the other two, seems to be someone who has tried to inform himself on a subject out of his field of expertise.

Fortunately for those of us who genuinely want to be informed about climate change and global warming, the consensus of climatologists is both clear and readily available to the unexpert public.

A refutation of Bill's "Maybe warming is happening, maybe it's not. If so, doubtlessly much more of a natural cycle than humanly induced" and the consensus of climatologists (as of 2001) is presented here:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/

That's the report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the "Physical Science Basis" for global warming.

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) issued in 2007 is here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm

A summary of the AR4 report is here:

report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf)

In that summary, the consensus of climatologists on global warming is:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.

There is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming. Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica)

Anthropogenic warming over the last three decades has likely had a discernible influence at the global scale on observed changes in many physical and biological systems.

There is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades.

Continued GHG emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.

A partial refutation of "Much more significant problems than our lifestyles are the overpopulation and unbridled, unregulated development in the third world and the latter in China, India, and elsewhere. We've gone miles further in environmental stewardship than the vast majority of the world, let them catch up. I'm tired of the US always having to fund the world and make all the sacrifices."

is here:

http://envirostats.info/2007/09/27/0438/

The point of the chart being that -- somehow -- the countries of Western Europe manage to produce gross domestic product while emitting only 60% of the carbon dioxide that the US emits for the same amount of GNP.

A refutation of Bill's "Go back to 1976 (I believe) and you'll find the same group of politicians and 'scientists' touting the coming 'Ice Age' on the cover of Time magazine' is presented here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11643

and here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_coolin

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