Is Global Warming real?

[Umbran]

Factoids I'd be curious to confirm:
Of all the glaciers on Earth, is there growth/shrinkage happening?

To quote National Geographic:
"Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035. Arctic sea ice has thinned significantly over the past half century, and its extent has declined by about 10 percent in the past 30 years. NASA's repeated laser altimeter readings show the edges of Greenland's ice sheet shrinking. Spring freshwater ice breakup in the Northern Hemisphere now occurs nine days earlier than it did 150 years ago, and autumn freeze-up ten days later. Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet (4.6 meters) in parts of Alaska. From the Arctic to Peru, from Switzerland to the equatorial glaciers of Man Jaya in Indonesia, massive ice fields, monstrous glaciers, and sea ice are disappearing, fast."

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/big-thaw/

Not that wikipedia is the end-all, be-all of science documentation, but it is a place to start reviewign a topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Of the sea level, what has been it's trend over time?

The very next paragraph of the National Geographic article, above:

"When temperatures rise and ice melts, more water flows to the seas from glaciers and ice caps, and ocean water warms and expands in volume. This combination of effects has played the major role in raising average global sea level between four and eight inches (10 and 20 centimeters) in the past hundred years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

If you prefer NASA
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

Images on this page seem to be broken, but the text and references hold:
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaLevelRise.asp

Of temperatures around the world, how have they charted outside of cities over time?

I don't know where you got the idea that cities are the central part of measuring warming. Cities are measured, sure. But so are rural areas. And surface and deep ocean measures are taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

This article speaks to what datasets are used to make determinations:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/01/explainer-how-do-scientists-measure-global-temperature/

 

[Ryujin]

I think the term you want is "anthropogenic". Anthropomorphic climate change would be climate change that is shaped like a person

"There is nothing we can do," is a great self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a point when you don't actually worry too much about who is at fault - it will ultimately destroy world economy who/what ever is at fault, so we'd better do something about it.

You are of course correct, but that's the term I heard in reports

The global warming debate has taken a rather interesting track. In the beginning the deniers simply said it wasn't happening. Then it was happening, but it was a natural cycle (sunspot cycles and the like). After that it was yes, it's happening, but it's only partly because of human activity. Now, finally, I think that it's being said by deniers that it's caused by humans but the worst offenders are places like China and India, and until they stop dumping carbon dioxide it's pointless for anyone else to stop.

Years back there was a website that addressed most of the common points of denial, and was created by climatologists. I haven't been able to find it recently, so it may no longer exist, but they asked one simple question; "If you admit it's happening and there's nothing we can do about it, then why is no one getting people's homes off the threatened shorelines?"

 

[Morrus]

And there's a reason for that. Far too many people, when addressed with the expression "global warming", come back with comments like, "Then why was I buried in six feet of snow last winter?"

Yup! Like I said:

I do enjoy it when people mistake the the weather right there where they are right now for the global climate, though. That's always funny! It's rather like me claiming Americans don't exist because there aren't any here right now.

 

[Umbran]

Years back there was a website that addressed most of the common points of denial, and was created by climatologists. I haven't been able to find it recently, so it may no longer exist, but they asked one simple question; "If you admit it's happening and there's nothing we can do about it, then why is no one getting people's homes off the threatened shorelines?"

Now, there are many websites that address the common points of denial. Putting "debunking climate change denial" into Google returns some useful resources:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense/
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ten-global-warming-skeptic-arguments-debunked
http://grist.org/series/skeptics/
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/28/_10_failed_climate_change_denial_arguments.html

If you want a science blogger's approach, try putting "Phil Plait debunking climate denial" into google, and you'll get a number of his articles which collect various references for you.

Oh, and just for the point - we've just had the overall hottest July on record:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/08/17/july_2015_hottest_july_on_record.html

 

[Janx]

I don't know where you got the idea that cities are the central part of measuring warming. Cities are measured, sure. But so are rural areas. And surface and deep ocean measures are taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

This article speaks to what datasets are used to make determinations:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/01/explainer-how-do-scientists-measure-global-temperature/

a) thanks for hunting down science stuff. This was my goal to ascertain what ideas in the book had some basis in fact or have since been debunked.

b) Urban Heat Island effect:
https://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ar4uhi

The book mentioned it. I figure the simplest way to deal with it was to bypass looking at cities for the moment, as they are complicated. If there was a consistent temperate rise (going with the Global Warming concept), it should be reflective in boring places.

c) as the book is 10 years old, many of its premises (potentially flawed) may now be better disproved/supported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear

 

[tuxgeo]

There are people who do read the scientific literature. For some, it's part of their job. I understand Crighton does so (at least to some degree) as background research for his stories. With that said, however, science is a human activity, and is therefore not immune to its own fads and trends. Back in the 1970s, global temperatures had been falling since about 1945, and there was some concern about "Global Cooling" (Wikipedia overview); but the favored terminology largely shifted to "Global Warming" as more and more science was done.

There are more factors affecting global warming than merely human-released CO2 in the atmosphere:
• human-poured, sun-exposed concrete and asphalt trap heat, and continue to radiate it back into the atmosphere at night;
• deforestation reduces transpiration of water from the subsoil, because trees can have deeper roots than many other plants, and trees transpire water from the levels where their roots reach;
• other greenhouse gasses besides CO2 can also trap heat -- water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, and others.
• improvements in solar capture of electrical power, and the accompanying storage and transfer of electrical energy, are permitting a gradual but perceptible shift in human energy usage away from the burning of fuels to the installation of hardware for human purposes.

End result? It doesn't "end," but it does go in trends.
As prices of solar technology continue to come down due to advances in the art, the economy will continue trending away from CO2 release from burning fuels. ("Anthropogenic global warming is scheduled to slow.")
We'll still have oil, but its financial price, while falling recently, won't go to zero. Fracking is expensive; drilling is expensive; refining is expensive. As prices adjust due to both oil depletion and changes in technology, we'll release lower amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in proportion to the amount of energy we use.

We'll still need to do more to alleviate climate change; and I suggest reforestation, where possible, as a great option because:
• trees absorb carbon, taken from the CO2 in the air, and sequester the carbon for later; and trees gain the ability to absorb more carbon as they grow larger (plant redwoods); and while the sea is also a great carbon-sink, it acidifies a bit as it does so;
• trees shade the ground, absorbing light from the sun for use in photosynthesis, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that hits the ground and is there converted to infrared, then to be trapped on earth by the greenhouse effect;
• the water transpired by trees adds to atmospheric moisture until it falls as precipitation or is removed by other means; where it falls, it refreshes other vegetation, not necessarily in the same country. If the sahara desert is shrinking, that may be a good thing.

Is the US going to reforest Iraq and Syria? No, those lands don't belong to the US; instead, they belong to their residents. If those residents desire cooler daytime temperatures, they might collaborate to plant some trees; but they would need to select varieties that can survive and grow in such lands.

 

[Ryujin]

Now, there are many websites that address the common points of denial. Putting "debunking climate change denial" into Google returns some useful resources:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense/
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ten-global-warming-skeptic-arguments-debunked
http://grist.org/series/skeptics/
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/28/_10_failed_climate_change_denial_arguments.html

If you want a science blogger's approach, try putting "Phil Plait debunking climate denial" into google, and you'll get a number of his articles which collect various references for you.

Oh, and just for the point - we've just had the overall hottest July on record:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/08/17/july_2015_hottest_july_on_record.html

Oh, I'm well aware that we now have a plethora of sites from which to choose. It's just that this was the first such site that I came across and I was quite fond of its matter-of-fact plain language explanations, and use of common sense examples.

 

[Janx]

There are people who do read the scientific literature. For some, it's part of their job. I understand Crighton does so (at least to some degree) as background research for his stories. With that said, however, science is a human activity, and is therefore not immune to its own fads and trends. Back in the 1970s, global temperatures had been falling since about 1945, and there was some concern about "Global Cooling" (Wikipedia overview); but the favored terminology largely shifted to "Global Warming" as more and more science was done.

Normally Crighton seems pretty good at turning a science thing into a story. I really liked his book about DNA Patenting becoming a problem.

That said, the wikipedia link reveals there's been quite a bit of science disagreement with his book. And his book has been used by Republicans apparently to bolster their denial.

Wikipedia's references section leads to a pretty good debunking by some sciency organization.

I think there is value in double-checking what folks are citing as evidence. I get the sense that 10 years ago, some articles existed with an introduction saying "global warming is happening" and then the tables and charts showed no problem. At least that seems to be Crighton's claim in the book. The problem is, that stuff's hard to read, so who's going to check?

Advising folks to not fall for hype or become a zealot's not bad advice. Unfortunately, his choice of topic here, by picking the "wrong" side, has possibly done a disservice to science, which normally I think Crighton was a supporter of.

 

[Umbran]

c) as the book is 10 years old, many of its premises (potentially flawed) may now be better disproved/supported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear

Reading the link you provide - many of his premises were disputed *at the time*, much less now:

"Sixteen of 18 U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder said the author was bending scientific data and distorting research."

"James E. Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at the time, wrote "He (Michael Crichton) doesn’t seem to have the foggiest notion about the science that he writes about." Jeffrey Masters, Chief meteorologist for Weather Underground, writes: "Crichton presents an error-filled and distorted version of the Global Warming science, favoring views of the handful of contrarians that attack the consensus science of the IPCC.""

The Union of Concerned Scientists put up a section of their website to address Chricton's distortions. It is still there: http://go.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=1670

So, while it is always okay to seek the truth, it seems you can probably set aside doubts that reading this book may have generated, because the book does not reflect reality on the matter.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think the term you want is "anthropogenic". Anthropomorphic climate change would be climate change that is shaped like a person

I, for one, WISH it were anthropomorphic climate change...we could REALLY do something about it.


"What did you do, Ray?"
"I tried to think of the most harmless thing...something that could never, ever possibly destroy us."