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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:55:25 GMT
MIDNIGHT SUN"CLIMATE IS WHAT YOU EXPECT AND WEATHER IS WHAT YOU GET"Does New Tree Ring Study Put the Chill on Global Warming?By Natalie Wolchover | LiveScience.com – Mon, Jul 16, 2012 ...The density and width of tree rings … ....A new analysis of 2,000 years of tree ring data has quickly made climate change deniers' list of greatest hits to the theory of manmade global warming. The tree rings "prove [the] climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now," the British newspaper the Daily Mail reported last week, "and [the] world has been cooling for 2,000 years." That and other articles suggest the current global warming trend is a mere blip when viewed in the context of natural temperature oscillations etched into tree rings over the past two millennia. The Star-Ledger, a New Jersey newspaper, mused that the findings lock in "one piece of an extremely complex puzzle that has been oversimplified by the Al Gores of the world." [Related: Heat wave blisters, from Maine to Michigan] However, the study actually does none of the above. "Our study doesn't go against anthropogenic global warming in any way," said Robert Wilson, a paleoclimatologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a co-author of the study, which appeared July 8 in the journal Nature Climate Change. The tree rings do help fill in a piece of Earth's complicated climate puzzle, he said. However, it is climate change deniers who seem to have misconstrued the bigger picture. [Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It] So, what exactly did the study find? Instead of using the width of trees' rings as a gauge of annual temperatures, as most past analyses of tree rings have done, Wilson and his fellow researchers tracked the density of northern Scandinavian trees' rings marking each year back to 138 B.C. They showed that density measurements give a slightly different reading of historic temperature fluctuations than ring width measurements, and according to their way of reckoning, the Roman and medieval warm periods reached higher temperatures than previously estimated. That's significant because "if we can improve our estimates for the medieval period, then that will help us understanding the dynamics in this climate system, and help us understand the current warming," Wilson told Life's Little Mysteries. [Related: Extreme weather convinces climate change doubters] But it's old news that Northern Europe experienced a natural warm period 2,000 years ago and during the 11th century. Not much is known about the Roman period, but the medieval warm spell primarily resulted from a decrease in volcanic activity, Wilson said. Volcanic ash in the atmosphere tends to block the sun, decreasing Earth's surface temperature. The current warming, on the other hand, has nothing to do with volcanoes. "None of this changes the fact that the current warming can't be modeled based on natural forces alone," he said. "Anthropogenic [greenhouse gas] emissions are the predominant forces in the late 20th century and early 21st century period." That Scandinavia may have been slightly warmer in the 11th century than today also doesn't change the fact that the world, as a whole, is warmer now. "This data is spatially specific. You would expect to see this trend in northern Scandinavia, but not in the Alps," Wilson said. "Almost all models show that the current global warming is probably warmer overall than that warming." [Slideshow: U.S. sweltering in heat wave] Finally, according to Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist, the tree rings show what mounds of other data have shown as well: For the past few millennia, Earth's northern latitudes had been cooling down overall. "Similarly, we expect that over the same period the tropics should have warmed slightly," Schmidt said in an email. These trends resulted from shifts in the Earth's orbit on thousand-year-long time-scales. But Wilson, Schmidt and the vast majority of climate scientists agree: human-caused warming of the entire globe now overwhelms those subtle, regional heat redistributions. World temperatures are now pushing in only one direction: up. news.yahoo.com/does-tree-ring-study-put-chill-global-warming-170718316.htmlFollow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover or Life's Little Mysteries @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+. ON THE OTHER HAND CHECK THIS OUT: climate.nasa.gov/
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:55:50 GMT
I posed the following question on Yahoo and have been getting quite thoughtful and educated answers (and some duds):answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkvbAwuCXshLP4s.PPxE6poazKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20120801164945AAoucMnI will post some of the better ones.Monday, 05 March 2007What Happened to Global Cooling?Written by Gary Benoit www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/17282-what-happened-to-global-cooling
"There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now."
Newsweek published this dire warning in its April 28, 1975 issue, years before global warming began getting the headlines it does today. The article continued: "The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree — a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states."
Were the editors at Newsweek clairvoyant? Based upon evidence — from shorter growing seasons, to increasing temperatures around the equator, to more extreme weather — did Newsweek accurately forecast the coming of global warming more than 30 years ago? Well, no. Though Newsweek did report at the time that "to scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather," they were not forecasting global warming. In an article entitled "The Cooling World," Newsweek warned: "The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down." Newsweek was not the only publication to warn about the supposed threat of global cooling during the 1970s. In an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" the June 24, 1974 issue of Time reported: "However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades." Indeed, the average global temperature had been falling since about 1940, a trend that did not change until about 1975. When this article appeared in 1974, the mean global temperature had fallen about 2.7 degrees F since the 1940s.
However, Time's "Another Ice Age?" article did not predict a break in this decades-long cooling trend. Just the opposite, in fact. "The trend shows no indication of reversing," Time warned. "Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."
The article continued: "Telltale signs are everywhere — from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest."
Fortune magazine, too, gave warning. A February 1974 article, entitled "Ominous Changes in the World's Weather," claimed that "there's fair agreement among researchers that the earth is now heading very slowly into another major ice age such as the one that brought the glaciers deep into North America before it retreated some 10,000 years ago." This article also pointed to the supposedly unusual weather patterns of the day as harbingers of much worse to come: "Climatologists now blame those recurring droughts and floods on a global cooling trend. It could bring massive tragedies for mankind."
Scientific Opinion What climatologists? All three articles quoted above cited Reid Bryson, then director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin. That's not surprising, since Bryson was considered one of the most important climatologists of his day. "There is very important climatic change going on right now," Fortune quoted Bryson as saying. "It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth — like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in rather drastic ways."
Bryson argued that an increasing density of small dust particles (also known as aerosols) in the atmosphere was adding to the Earth's albedo. That is, it was causing a larger percentage of the sun's light to be reflected back into space. He also believed that the cooling effect of the increasingly dense dust covering had become so great that it started overpowering the warming effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ending a warming trend that lasted until about 1940 and ushering in global cooling.
Other climatologists who agreed with Bryson's assessment included S.I. Rasool and Stephen H. Schneider at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In an article in the July 9, 1971 issue of Science, entitled "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate," Rasool and Schneider concluded that a large increase of dust particles in the atmosphere would have a much greater impact on the global climate than a large increase of carbon dioxide.
Hmm, why did Rasool and Schneider believe that the concentration of atmospheric dust particles could increase this radically? Not surprisingly, they pointed to man. They warned: "It is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase six- to eightfold in the next 50 years" — an amount they believed could increase the Earth's overall dust concentration sufficiently to cause an ice age.
Though there was disagreement at the time as to whether the Earth was cooling, and if it was cooling how much of the cooling, if any, was attributable to man's activities, Rasool and Schneider were not alone in viewing man as a culprit. Bryson too teared that man's impact on the global climate was becoming increasingly significant. As the June 24, 1974 issue of Time stated: "The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth."
Of course, other factors besides man were at play, such as other particles making their way into the atmosphere coming from natural sources such as volcanoes. The key question was: Would man's own "contribution" to the blanket of atmospheric particles surrounding the Earth truly make an appreciable difference on the global climate? Regardless of the possible factors at play during the global temperature drop from about 1940 to about 1975, there is no question that the temperature did drop.
The November 1976 issue of National Geographic, in an article entitled "What's Happening to Our Climate?" quoted the U.S. National Science Board as saying two years earlier, "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade." But the same article also acknowledged that though "most scientists agree that today's ice movement may reflect a worldwide cooling trend ... their explanations vary widely."
One scientist who detected advancing ice movement during the 1970s was climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University. As Time reported in its "Another Ice Age?" article, when Kukla "and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round."
Some climatologists were so concerned about global cooling and advancing ice that they believed governments needed to intervene to combat the trend. But they were not optimistic. Newsweek's 1975 "The Cooling World" article reported: "Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climate change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climate uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies."
The Newsweek article concluded: "The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."
Then and Now These days, of course, we no longer hear much if anything at all about the possibility of runaway global cooling triggering another ice age. Instead, we hear a lot about the threat of catastrophic global warming. We hear so much about it, in fact, that today's headlines about global warming undoubtedly dwarf the media attention given to global cooling in the 1970s.
What happened? Well, one thing that happened is that the temperature trend changed. After dropping for about 35 years, the temperature started going up again in the mid 1970s, though the global temperature now is only slighter higher than it was in 1940 when the cooling trend began.
Over the centuries and millennia the weather has changed, at times radically. Those changes included the ice age, when advancing glaciers covered much of the northern United States. They also included the "little ice age" beginning in the 15th century. Prior to that time, according to the 1974 Fortune article quoted above, "grapes were widely cultivated in England, and the French complained of English wine makers dumping their wares in European markets. As early as the tenth century, the Vikings had established prosperous colonies in Greenland, having named the island for its verdant pastures. By the early fifteenth century, however, these colonies were wiped out by cold and hunger and now four-fifths of Greenland lies buried under hundreds of feet of ice cap."
Obviously nobody — at least nobody we know of! — blames man's activities on Earth for either the ice age or the little ice age. But in the 1970s some experts argued that man's impact on his environment had grown to the point where his atmospheric pollutants were contributing significantly to global cooling, just as some experts now argue that his CO2 and other "greenhouse" gas emissions are causing global warming.
One of these scientists is Dr. Stephen Schneider, the coauthor of the Science report cited above, who in the 1970s was worried about the threat of global cooling. Now at Stanford University, Dr. Schneider not only sees things differently but is considered one of the leading experts sounding the alarm about global warming.
In an MSNBC report on January 9 of this year, Schneider argued that today's warming trend "has been induced by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe waste." Regarding extreme weather such as droughts and hurricanes, Schneider acknowledged that "we all know that humans don't make hurricanes." But he added: "Katrina was not produced by global warming, yet Katrina was a little stronger because it went over an ocean that was half a degree warmer than it would have been."
Obviously, if Schneider is right now then he had to be wrong in the 1970s. But is he right now? The fact that so many experts were wrong in the '70s does not necessarily mean that they are wrong today. But it does at least show that the experts are sometimes incredibly wrong.
Some of them anyway. Not everybody sounded the alarm about global cooling in the 1970s, and not everybody is sounding the alarm about global warming today. There are in fact many reputable scientists who simply do not buy the theory of man-induced, catastrophic global warming, including Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, and Dr. Timothy Ball, chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project in Canada. In fact, 17,000 scientists, two-thirds of them with advanced degrees, signed a petition urging the U.S. government "to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto ... and any other similar proposals." But these are not the experts the major media usually refer to in their global-warming coverage, and when the media do refer to them they are usually referred to as global warming "skeptics" as if to suggest they are outside the mainstream of scientific thought.
Media depictions to the contrary, there is no climate-change consensus within the scientific community — either now or in the 1970s.
(This article originally appeared under the title "Weather Forecast: Doom.")
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:56:22 GMT
from Liam There are many differing opinions, but the one undeniable fact is that CO2 levels are increasing at a more rapid rate since records began. The reason for this is disputed.
Some people believe that humans and the emissions which they cause through combustion, deforestation and waste disposal (among others) is the main cause of this and we must stop doing this or the earth will warm too much. The gases which we are releasing into the environment (CO2 NOx SO2 etc.) are causing the ozone layer to thicken and prevent as much hear to reflect off the earth and back into space, therefore causing the average temperature of the earth to increase.
HOWEVER - a rather controversial theory which I'm more inclined to believe is that the earth's temperature has always peaked and troughed - even wore man thrived here! Ice core records show that the temperature of the earth was higher in the Roman era than it is now and the highest it has been was a few million years ago before any human life existed. The temperature now isn't nearly what it was then. Therefore, a combination of the angle of the earth's tilt, the shape of it's orbit around the sun and the current heat output of the sun must have a profound effect upon the earth's temperature and us as humans are just along for the journey. I've probably missed bits here and there, but I hope you get the jist - I didn't want to give a simple, conventional 'yes it is' answer. As you can probably assume, nobody knows the correct answer to this heavily debated question, but do some research yourself and make your up your own mind! There is evidence to support both sides and when thought about side by side, it can be quite challenging to decide which one seems more likely (or neither?!)... I hope this has answered your question, Liam @theghostofliam Source(s): 2 years worth of physics and geography lessons, along with a series of lectures. 19 hours ago Report Abuse 6 people rated this as good from iamhermansen the temperature of the Earth has fluctuated over the life span of the earth going from cold to hot several times.
Liam suggests two very viable reasons for this and I am inclined to believe that it is a combination of both, though his assessment of the level to which Human activity is responsible is, IMO, significantly underrated. consider that no other species has had such an impact on the Earth's climate, ecology, and toxicology in as short a time frame cannot help but have measurable and distinct effects on climate change.
certainly algae, proto-plankton and plankton have had serious effects but not only did they have slow and lasting effects they are still here after millions of years... now if you consider the length of time that man has been on the planet (and then compare the length of the time we've been able to manipulate our environment which is only about the last 100 years...). for comparison imagine a stack of dimes a mile high, representing the life of the Earth. then as you get to the top single dime which represents the existence of man on the Earth then look at the effects we have had on the planet, from mass extinctions and the depletion of species. to the change in the composition of the atmosphere, oceans, land. we have polluted all of it. we use petrochemicals as fertilizers because we have depleted the soils we grow our foods in, we have polluted the Oceans with petrochemicals and radioactive wastes - do you know there is more plastic in the Oceans than in most major landfills world wide (most of the plastics are so small that they are 'invisible'), and the depletion of the Ozone layer due to CO2 emissions and CFBs from aerosols are allowing more of the suns harmful radioactive rays to penetrate the atmosphere and cause further damage to us and our ecosystems. All in the last 100 years which would be represented by the first atomic layer of that dime of our mile high stack.
yes there is evidence for a natural warming and cooling cycle of the Earth. but there is also evidence that it is spiking since we entered into the industrial/technological era. the temperature is rising faster than any other time in recorded history including glacial records. the fact that it coincides with our use of petrochemicals cannot be simple coincidence. and that as we use more petrochemicals it rises faster is not a warning sign to us? it should be.
consider also that people born before the nuclear era were born with nearly untraceable radioactivity (there is inherent radioactivity due to the fact that the Earth's core is radio-active and that we do get bombarded by solar radio-active particles constantly) but that people born after the rise of nuclear technology are more radio active than can be explained by natural processes. consider then the rise of cancers that affect the world as a whole. we are sicker now than we have ever been (as a whole).
so Yes there is global warming (and cooling) but it is also undeniable that Man has had an effect on the acceleration of climate change. Source(s): BTW for those of you who simply say YES and YES what evidence do you have to support your claims.. I agree with you but you give a lousy answer without substance... try to back up your statements with something... even if it is only anecdotal. Edited 16 hours ago Report Abuse 8 people rated this as good
by Jeff M Member since: October 24, 2009 Total points: 20,584 (Level 6) Add Contact Yes. The world is warming in all datasets. In all data sets that measure just the surface global warming has continued, the last decade being the warmest decade on record with 2005 and 2010 being the warmest years on record.
www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1508
Proof humans are responsible for global warming comes when we look at the frequencies of radiation associated with the warming. First we look at the frequencies associated with CO2 absorption. To do this we can go to the following page and select the following options.
spectralcalc.com/spectral_browser/db_intensity.php
1. Select 'Group by Molecule' if it is not already selected. 2. Select the following in 'Spectral Range': Units - wavenumber, Lower limit - 400cm^-1, Upper limit - 1400cm^-1 (This is the approximate area for the black body radiation curve of the Earth) 3. Select the following in 'Options': 'scale by atmospheric abundance', Atmosphere - standard, Scale - linear, Symbols - sticks 4. From the select menu under 'Species' select the following gasses: H2O, CO2, O3, CH4, N2O (These are the five most prominent greenhouse gasses.)
After you hit the plot button you can see just how much an effect each gas has as it pertains to it's atmospheric abundance. As you can see the core of the CO2 band is at about 667cm^-1. Now what happens when we increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? To find out we look at a University level text book written by David Archer, a professor at the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. Chapter 4 of his book "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast" deals with greenhouse gasses. If you scroll down to figure 4-5 near the bottom of the following page we can see that, while the middle of the CO2 absorption band remains relatively static after a certain concentration is reached, the band does not get deeper but gets wider with increasing CO2 concentration.
forecast.uchicago.edu/archer.ch4.greenhouse_gases.pdf
Next we look at the changes in tropospheric, or lower atmospheric, radiation to see what is causing the current warming and if it is actually due to CO2. Griggs et al published a paper in 2007 that built upon their 2001 paper that did just that. If we look at the various graphs on the paper in the following link we see a range of measured frequencies from 700cm^-1, the right hand side of the CO2 absorption band and the point where we will see the most change if the increase is due to CO2, and 1200cm^-1. And, in fact, between the years 1970 and 2003, the study period, we see just that.
journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4204.1
Now that we know the warming is due to increases in CO2 we need to find out where that additional CO2 is coming from. Historically during warming periods CO2 concentration has risen after temperatures increase due to what is known as Henry's Law, which states that at a constant temperature the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid, and Le Chatelier's Principal, which states if a chemical system at equilibrium experiences a change in concentration, temperature, volume, or partial pressure, then the equilibrium shifts to counteract the imposed change and a new equilibrium is established. However, as we are currently using fossil fuels from what is known as the geological carbon cycle and pumping them back into what is known as the biological carbon cycle we are throwing that natural balance off. The result being an increase in the partial pressure, or weight, of that CO2 above the surface of the ocean and the oceans trying to maintain equilibrium. They are actually absorbing more CO2 than they are emitting during a warming period, as evidenced by their decreasing pH or acidification, which would not occur naturally.
www.bu-eh.org/uploads/Main/doney_ann_rev_proof.pdf
For more proof we can look at measurements of increasing atmospheric CO2, which is currently rising at an average rate of 2 parts per million (ppm) or 15.6 billion tonnes annually, and estimates of human emissions, which stands at over 33.5 billion tonnes annually.
cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/other/Sicilypaper.pdf cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim… scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/in_situ_co2/monthly_mlo.csv
The result of this being that the warming is mostly due to increasing CO2 and humans are responsible for it's increase. 16 hours ago Report Abuse 9 people rated this as good from antarcticice Well if you want an example of denier pap look at BB answer "Liam's answer is a very reasonable one."
Then look at Liam's reasonable answer (part) "The gases which we are releasing into the environment (CO2 NOx SO2 etc.) are causing the ozone layer to thicken and prevent as much hear to reflect off the earth and back into space, therefore causing the average temperature of the earth to increase." He claim to have "2 years worth of physics and geography lessons, along with a series of lectures."
Clearly he wasn't listening, Co2 does not cause Ozone to "thicken" CFC's cause a thinning of the ozone layer, which is now slowly recovering.
This is the sort of uninformed fiction deniers often seem to enjoy spreading to confuse the issue and just make up theories and conspiracies as they go. The scientific opinion on what is happening is in the vast majority, that we are experiencing a global warming and rising Co2 is the main cause of that, the data backs that theory, be it temperature, glacial retreat, sea level rise, shorter winter seasons etc. This is linked to a co2 level higher than it has been in ~800,000 years.
Deniers will try to spin many stories, but try and get details and they will either claim they don't need to offer any or the source will turn out to be one of the many blogs they have created to spread their BS stories. There are no genuine science groups left who don't think AGW is happening or that our Co2 emissions are the primary cause, the evidence is now just to strong.
climate.nasa.gov/ www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
Then there's that old denier favorite fall back position one volcano produces more Co2 than humans do in a century, scientifically this is the exact opposite of the facts, it is in fact humans who produce 100x the Co2 per year that volcanic emissions do.
hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html
A sad indicator for much of the denier case, they just lie and then try to accuse the other side of what they are doing, this is a quite common symptom of the condition of denial.
Edit: Lloyd J "Actually the latest data indicates the globe has cooled about 6 degrees in the last 2000 years" it does, can you link to that, why do I have the feeling you can't.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Here is most of the work on proxy temps, note the temp scale on the right it peaks at 1.5c and goes below the mid line just 1c (a maximum range then of just 2.5c) not 6c Lloyd seems to be trying to invent, If he knew the first thing about the subject then he would know that 8c is the full average change for an interglacial, by Lloyd's measure we would be pretty much back in an ice age by now if temps had dropped 6c as he pretends. P.S. Thanks for proving my point on the way deniers behave. Edited 13 hours ago Report Abuse 8 people rated this as good
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:57:20 GMT
July was hottest month in U.S. history Aug. 8, 2012 10:01 AM Associated Press
This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
And even less a surprise: The U.S. this year keeps setting records for weather extremes, based on the precise calculations that include drought, heavy rainfall, unusual temperatures, and storms.
The average temperature last month was 77.6 degrees. That breaks the old record from July 1936 by 0.2 degree, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Records go back to 1895.
"It's a pretty significant increase over the last record," said climate scientist Jake Crouch of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In the past, skeptics of global warming have pointed to the Dust Bowl to argue that recent heat isn't unprecedented. But Crouch said this shows that the current year "is out and beyond those Dust Bowl years. We're rivaling and beating them consistently from month to month."
Three of the nation's five hottest months on record have been recent Julys: This year, 2011 and 2006. Julys in 1936 and 1934 round out the top five.
Last month also was 3.3 degrees warmer than the 20th century average for July.
Thirty-two states had months that were among their 10 warmest Julys, but only one, Virginia, had the hottest July on record. Crouch said that's a bit unusual, but that it shows the breadth of the heat and associated drought.
For example in 2011, the heat seemed to be centered mostly in Oklahoma and Texas. But this summer "the epicenters of the heat kind of migrated around. It kind of got everybody in the action this month," Crouch said.
The first seven months of 2012 were the warmest on record for the nation. And August 2011 through July this year was the warmest 12-month period on record, just beating out the July 2011-June 2012 time period.
But it's not just the heat that's noteworthy. NOAA has a measurement called the U.S. Climate Extreme Index which dates to 1900 and follows several indicators of unusually high and low temperatures, severe drought, downpours, and tropical storms and hurricanes. NOAA calculates the index as a percentage, which mostly reflects how much of the nation experience extremes. In July, the index was 37 percent, a record that beat the old mark for July last year. The average is 20 percent.
For the first seven months of the year, the extreme index was 46 percent, beating the old record from 1934. This year's extreme index was heavily driven by high temperatures both day and night, which is unusual, Crouch said.
"This would not have happened in the absence of human-caused climate change," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
Crouch and Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said what's happening is a double whammy of weather and climate change. They point to long-term higher night temperatures from global warming and the short-term effect of localized heat and drought that spike daytime temperatures.
Drought is a major player because in the summer "if it is wet, it tends to be cool, while if it is dry, it tends to be hot," Trenberth said.
So the record in July isn't such a big deal, Trenberth said. "But the fact that the first seven months of the year are the hottest on record is much more impressive from a climate standpoint, and highlights the fact that there is more than just natural variability playing a role: Global warming from human activities has reared its head in a way that can only be a major warning for the future."
Here are some more numbers unlikely to provide cold comfort. The coolest July on record was in 1915. The coldest month in U.S. history was January 1979 with an average temperature of 22.6 degrees.Read more: www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20120808july-hottest-month-history.html#ixzz22zj6KYbg
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:57:49 GMT
BBC: Sandy - Anatomy of a Superstorm (December 2012)New York Sea Grant 1.24K subscribers BBC Synopsis: "Sandy: The Anatomy of a Superstorm" tells an all-encompassing story of the massive impact Hurricane Sandy had upon tens of millions across multiple states, including its nighttime landfall and the revelation of mass destruction upon sunrise. This one-hour special reveals the science of how this hurricane began in the Caribbean and developed into a devastating super storm, slamming the eastern United States as a combination hurricane/nor'easter/winter storm.
A dramatic minute-by-minute account of the superstorm that brought New York State to its knees. Using satellite imagery, CGI mapping and the powerful personal testimony of those who lived through it, this is a forensic analysis of the meteorological, engineering and human devastation wreaked by Sandy.
The program spotlights historical records broken by the storm and explores the possibility of more super storms in our future. Produced by Peacock Productions, "Sandy: The Anatomy of a Superstorm" features the scientific insights and expertise of The Weather Channel meteorologists including Jim Cantore, Stephanie Abrams, Bryan Norcross and Stu Ostro as they relay their first-hand experience in analyzing, forecasting and warning of the unprecedented storm.
For more on how NYSG's funded researchers and specialists have responded to Sandy, check out www.nyseagrant.org/superstorms.... Also, NYSG's severe storm and hurricane resources can be found at www.nyseagrant.org/hurricane.
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:58:20 GMT
I definitely believe that this superstorm is the result of global warming and climate change. In fact, it is kind of surprising to me that we have never had this kind of weather event before: a tropical cyclone, fueled by much warmer than normal Atlantic Ocean water, colliding over one of the most populous regions on the planet, the Mid-Atlantic seaboard of the U.S., with a cold low coming out of Canada to produce this kind of devastation. It can't help but be a sign of things to come unless we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. But God knows that the oil, coal, and gas industries are the ones fueling the climate change deniers and leading us to believe that such devastation is normal. It'll definitely become the new normal if we don't wise up. But as Al Gore said in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, quoting Upton Sinclair: " It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:59:04 GMT
Misleading NY Times article provides fodder for conservatives to attack Gore on global warming mediamatters.org/research/2007/03/26/misleading-ny-times-article-provides-fodder-for/138408Numerous media figures and conservatives have seized on The New York Times' March 13 article on global warming -- which, as Media Matters for America and others have noted, includes misleading characterizations, a false comparison, and misrepresentations of Gore's position -- to attack Gore. As Media Matters for America repeatedly noted, the Times article relied heavily on global warming skeptics with histories of promoting misinformation on the issue. While most skeptics cited in the article were identified as such, the Times identified geology professor Don J. Easterbrook as a "rank-and-file" scientist, when, in fact, Easterbrook is a global warming skeptic who has predicted global cooling between 2065 and 2100 and denies that human activity has contributed to global warming over the past century. The article also made misleading claims regarding Gore's statements about the effects of global warming, which have since been advanced by various conservative news outlets and media figures. numerous media figures have used this false comparison and other elements from the March 13 Times article to attack Gore: ¡On the March 24 edition of The Beltway Boys, Barnes also claimed "there is no scientific consensus on global warming." In fact, as Media Matters has documented, the vast majority of climate scientists and organizations agree that human activity contributes to global warming. ¡In his March 26 column, U.S. News & World Report senior writer Michael Barone asserted that "[e]ven The New York Times bridles" at Gore's global warming claims. Barone continued: "After Gore won the Academy Award for his film on climate change, the Times printed an article in which respected scientists -- not Republicans, not on oil company payrolls -- charged that Gore has vastly exaggerated the likelihood of catastrophic effects." In fact, as Media Matters has noted (here and here), at least three of the scientists cited in the Times article have connections to the oil industry. Barone also repeated the Times' faulty sea level comparison to claim that the "fine print of even the scientific reports that Gore likes to cite" shows that Gore is "vastly exaggerat[ing]" the threat of global warming. ¡In a March 21National Review op-ed, American Enterprise Institute fellow Steven F. Hayward wrote that "a backlash in the scientific community has begun" against Gore. Hayward continued, "Last week, New York Times veteran science reporter William Broad filed a devastating article about scientists who are 'alarmed' at Gore's alarmism." Hayward went on to cite the faulty sea level comparison and quote heavily from the Times article. ¡In his March 22 syndicated column, Jay Ambrose described as "preposterous" what he said was "Gore's unscientific, alarmist, inane claim in his movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' that sea levels will zoom upward by 20 feet over the next century if we don't heed his remedies." He further described Gore as "this king of ballyhoo" who has nothing more "to contribute to the warming debate than fallacies and exaggeration." In fact, contrary to Ambrose's assertion, even the Times article noted that Gore "cit[ed] no particular time frame" while discussing the consequences of potential sea level increases. Ambrose asserted: "The scientific consensus as expressed in the recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that the rise will not be 20 feet by 2101, or 15 or 10 or 5. It likely won't even be 20 inches, which is to say, we clever human beings will be able to adapt." Ambrose further wrote: "If you think maybe that's it -- that the movie's errors end there -- you haven't read a recent New York Times story in which rank-and-file scientists express concern that the movie confuses extreme speculation with certainty or learned how major think tanks, buttressing their criticisms with documentation, have had at the Oscar-winning movie and companion book with a vengeance." ¡While interviewing Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on the March 22 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that "The New York Times, of all newspapers, the other day said in one of their articles that scientists argued that some of Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous," and asked Inhofe, "Why the change of tide?" Inhofe replied: "His best friends are The New York Times, and to have them say that you're exaggerating so much you're hurting your own cause is just incredible. And that's -- I couldn't believe it when I read that in The New York Times." Inhofe also claimed that Gore's "credibility" is "going down," and concluded: "We're going to win this one." ¡A March 21 Washington Times editorial proposed this question of Gore: "Can you explain why the New York Times would devote a front-page story to the problematic factual inconsistencies and exaggerations of 'An Inconvenient Truth'?" The editorial added: "It must be the vast right-wing conspiracy." ¡As Media Matters has noted, on the March 21 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels used the false sea level comparison as the basis for characterizing Gore's position as "beyond shrill" and "thermonuclear." ¡In his March 19 Philadelphia Inquirer column, Jonathan Last referred to Gore's "promiscuous doomsaying" and stated: " t's no surprise that some scientists have begun to quietly complain about Gore. A number of them went on record with their complaints to the New York Times last week." Last went on to cite the false sea level comparison. He also wrote that Gore is "[e]ver apocalyptic" in his global warming predictions, and, as proof, cited Easterbrook's claim in the Times article "that within the last 15,000 years there have been shifts up to '20 times greater than the warming in the past century.'" ¡In this March 19 column, Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) TV/radio writer Tom Jicha cited the Times article and revived several other falsehoods to smear Gore. Jicha wrote that "Mr. 'I Invented the Internet' is renowned for his exaggerations. He has been using the microphones provided him by the mainstream media to predict, among other things, that global warming will cause ocean levels to rise 20 feet." Jicha also cited the Times article to claim that Gore "lie": "An article in The New York Times last week reported, 'Part of [Gore's] scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.'"
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 15:59:54 GMT
Meet the Network Hiding the Koch Money: Donors Trust and Donors Capital FundPosted on October 25, 2012 by Connor Gibson Posted on October 25, 2012 by Connor Gibson Earlier this year internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a major hub of climate change denial and right-wing extremism, were publicly leaked. The documents exposed the Heartland Institute's funders and strategies for attacking climate science, and led to a mass exodus of Heartland's corporate funders. Today, a newly updated report based in large part on Heartland's internal documents has revealed two new insights into the way in which the anti-climate science movement has been supported and financed over the last decade. 1.A billionaire named Barre Seid is the Heartland Institute's main sugar daddy. He is the Anonymous Donor listed in Heartland's fundraising plan who finances climate science denial operations to confuse children, the general public and policymakers over global warming. Seid has been the biggest booster behind Heartland's attacks on climate science, donating millions of dollars to keep the Heartland Institute's anti-science work afloat. 2.The Koch brothers and other ultra-wealthy industrial ideologues are now hiding much of their donations to conservative political outlets through an obscure group of foundations that specialize in secrecy. In total over $311 million has been put through twin organizations known as Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund which share an address in Alexandria, Virginia. The people running these organizations are close to the Kochs and have numerous ties to the groups that the DONORS network funds, such as the Koch-founded Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women's Forum and the Manhattan Institute. The Kochs have a little-known foundation that only donates to these DONORS groups called the Knowledge & Progress Fund, according to the report detailing this network. The report, written by a silicon Valley scientist turned public interest watchdog John Mashey, is titled Fakexperts, and details how right-wing foundations associated with the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Bradley family, and others have been using a secret finance network to support extremist right-wing groups. Most of these groups are associated with the State Policy Network, a band of corporate apologists who have made careers denying everything from the dangers of smoking cigarettes to the existence of climate change. Some of the sketchy groups that have received big chunks of their 2010 budgets through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, including top climate change science deniers: ¡Americans For Prosperity Foundation got $7.6 million from DONORS groups in 2010, 43% of its budget. AFP Foundation is chaired by David Koch and has received millions in direct funding from Koch foundations since the Koch brothers founded it. ¡Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) got $1.3 million from DONORS in 2010, 45% of its budget. ¡Cornwall Alliance (through the James Partnership) got $339,500 from DONORS in 2010, 75% of its budget. ¡Heartland Institute got $1.6 million from DONORS in 2010, 27% of it's budget, which came from Chicago billionaire Barre Seid (see p. 67). ¡State Policy Network got 36% of its 2010 budget ($4.8 million) from DONORS. SPN members include just about every climate-denying organization and every conservative think tank in the country, including AFP and Heartland. The twin DONORS organizations are advertised as a way for very wealthy people and corporations to remain hidden when funding sensitive or controversial issues groups, which creates a lack of accountability that is troubling. DONORS also promises to only funnel money to groups with an extreme anti-environmental bend, so industrial billionaires need not worry about their money winding up here at Greenpeace, as Donor Trust co-founder Whitney Ball explains: if a donor names his child a successor advisor, and she wants to give to Greenpeace, we're not going to be able to do that. Expect to hear more about Donorfs Trust and Donor's Capital Fund as we continue to track the dirty money of Koch Industries and their allies. For more, check out PBS FRONTLINErecent dig on climate deniers in a special called Climate of Doubt, which includes descriptions of the DONORS groups from Drexel University's Robert Brulle. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/ This entry was posted in Global warming, Oil industry and tagged AFP, americans for prosperity, barre seid, billionaire, bradley, Cato Institute, CFACT, committee for a constructive tomorrow, cornwall alliance, donors capital fund, donors trust, fakexperts, Heartland Institute, heritge foundation, james partnership, john mashey, koch brothers, richard mellon scaife, spn, state policy network, whitney ball by Connor Gibson. Bookmark the permalink. About Connor Gibson Connor Gibson does research as part of Greenpeace's Investigations team. He focuses on polluting industries and their front groups, PR firms and political operatives. View all posts by Connor Gibson ¨ Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. 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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:01:07 GMT
This is a BBC documentary series in three parts, presented by Professor Iain Stewart, which explores how battles have raged over climate over the last 40 years. Back in the 70's, some scientists thought that the climate would cool - what went wrong with their calculations? Professor Stewart looks at what they missed and how their error set the stage for people to deny climate change was occurring. He also recounts the history of how the Presidency of the USA decided to commission a secret study to independently verify whether climate change was happening and how to the governments surprise they confirmed AGW in 1979. Episode 2 shows the history of the counter-attack - how climate change deniers sought to scupper global action to stop climate change. Iain Stewart examines the scientific hypothesis of the deniers to see if it has any merit. Episode 3 deals with the models being used by climate scientists to determine the pace of climate change. Are they accurate, and is it true they are underestimating the pace of climate change?
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:43:34 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:44:08 GMT
Feeling the heat: Earth in July was hottest month on record Associated Press By SETH BORENSTEIN FILE - In this July 3, 2015 file photo, a person walks past a store shelf filled with fans in Marseille, southern where the temperature rose to 89.6 Fahrenheit. Federal officials said Earth in July broiled to the hottest month on record, smashing old marks. July 2015 was 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit, beating the previous globally hottest month mark set in 1998 and 2010 by about one-seventh of a degree. That’s a large margin for weather records. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File) WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth just keeps getting hotter. July was the planet's warmest month on record, smashing old marks, U.S. weather officials said. And it's almost a dead certain lock that this year will beat last year as the warmest year on record, they said. July's average temperature was 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit, beating the previous global mark set in 1998 and 2010 by about one-seventh of a degree, according to figures released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's a large margin for weather records, with previous monthly heat records broken by a 20th of a degree or less. "It just reaffirms what we already know: that the Earth is warming," said NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch. "The warming is accelerating and we're really seeing it this year." NOAA records go back to 1880. Separate calculations by NASA and the Japanese weather agency also found July 2015 to be a record. The first seven months of 2015 were the hottest January-to-July span on record, according to NOAA. The seven-month average temperature of 58.43 degrees is 1.53 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average and a sixth of a degree warmer than the old record set in 2010. Given that the temperatures have already been so high already — especially the oceans, which are slow to cool — NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden said she is "99 percent certain" that 2015 will be the hottest on record for the globe. The oceans would have to cool dramatically to prevent it, and they are trending warmer, not cooler, she said. Crouch, Blunden and other scientists outside of the government said these temperatures are caused by a combination of man-made climate change and a strong, near-record El Nino. An El Nino is a warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that alters weather worldwide for about a year. The oceans drove the globe to record levels. Not only were the world's oceans the warmest they've been in July, but they were 1.35 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average. The heat hit hard in much of Europe and the Middle East. It was the hottest July on record in Austria, where records go back to 1767. Parts of France had temperatures that were on average 7 degrees above normal and temperatures broke 100 in the Netherlands, which is a rarity. And an Iranian city had a heat index (the "feels like" temperature) of 165 degrees, which was still not quite record. Nine of the 10 hottest months on record have happened since 2005, according to NOAA. Twenty-two of the 25 hottest months on record have occurred after the year 2000. The other three were in 1998 and 1997. This shows that despite what climate change doubters say, there is no pause in warming since 1998, Blunden said. It doesn't matter if a month or a year is No. 1 or No. 2 or No. 5 hottest on record, said University of Georgia climate scientist Marshall Shepherd. "The records are getting attention but I worry the public will grow weary of reports of new records each month," Shepherd said in an email. "I am more concerned about how the Earth is starting to respond to the changes and the implications for my children." Online: NOAA on July records: www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201507Seth Borenstein can be followed at twitter.com/borenbears
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:44:37 GMT
A full fledge eruption of a couple of the Earth's large super volcanoes would stop Global Warming in its tracks: Ash in the atmosphere would block sunlight keeping things cooler for a while. Too much ash could be devastating for the short term. Volcanic eruptions are very violent and effect the immediate climate around it, it really depends on the sort of Volcano, normal volcanos like Mount St Helens effected its surrounding's by clogging up the atmosphere with ash, and Sulphur Dioxide which are both ejected from a volcano, a Super Volcano can cause a volcanic winter, in which the Sun's light is not allowed through the dust and ash in the atmosphere causing the surface temps to go down dramatically, by about -20 degrees. Eruptions enhance the haze effect to a greater extent than the greenhouse effect, and thus they can lower mean global temperatures. It was thought for many years that the greatest volcanic contribution of the haze effect was from the suspended ash particles in the upper atmosphere that would block out solar radiation. However, these ideas changed in the 1982 after the eruption of the Mexican volcano, El Chichon. Although the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens lowered global temperatures by 0.1OC, the much smaller eruption of El Chichon lowered global temperatures three to five times as much. Although the Mt. St. Helens blast emitted a greater amount of ash in the stratosphere, the El Chichon eruption emitted a much greater volume of sulfur-rich gases (40x more). It appears that the volume of pyroclastic debris emitted during a blast is not the best criteria to measure its effects on the atmosphere. The amount of sulfur-rich gases appears to be more important. Sulfur combines with water vapor in the stratosphere to form dense clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. These droplets take several years to settle out and they are capable to decreasing the troposphere temperatures because they absorb solar radiation and scatter it back to space.
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:45:00 GMT
A full fledge eruption of a couple of the Earth's large super volcanoes would stop Global Warming in its tracks: Ash in the atmosphere would block sunlight keeping things cooler for a while. Too much ash could be devastating for the short term. Volcanic eruptions are very violent and effect the immediate climate around it, it really depends on the sort of Volcano, normal volcanos like Mount St Helens effected its surrounding's by clogging up the atmosphere with ash, and Sulphur Dioxide which are both ejected from a volcano, a Super Volcano can cause a volcanic winter, in which the Sun's light is not allowed through the dust and ash in the atmosphere causing the surface temps to go down dramatically, by about -20 degrees. Eruptions enhance the haze effect to a greater extent than the greenhouse effect, and thus they can lower mean global temperatures. It was thought for many years that the greatest volcanic contribution of the haze effect was from the suspended ash particles in the upper atmosphere that would block out solar radiation. However, these ideas changed in the 1982 after the eruption of the Mexican volcano, El Chichon. Although the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens lowered global temperatures by 0.1OC, the much smaller eruption of El Chichon lowered global temperatures three to five times as much. Although the Mt. St. Helens blast emitted a greater amount of ash in the stratosphere, the El Chichon eruption emitted a much greater volume of sulfur-rich gases (40x more). It appears that the volume of pyroclastic debris emitted during a blast is not the best criteria to measure its effects on the atmosphere. The amount of sulfur-rich gases appears to be more important. Sulfur combines with water vapor in the stratosphere to form dense clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. These droplets take several years to settle out and they are capable to decreasing the troposphere temperatures because they absorb solar radiation and scatter it back to space.
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:45:40 GMT
For those of you who doubt global warming is happening, doubt climate change is created by global warming and doubt that use of fossil fuels and other human caused warming is happening please answer me this: 1) Why do you think Exxon Mobil and other big energy companies were trying to hide their research from the 70's and 80's which proved the impact of the use of their fossil fuels created global warming? 2) If you do now believe in global warming's cause based on this new very clear evidence or corporate malfeasance why then wouldn't you believe the majority of scientists conclusions before this? Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/investigation-finds-exxon-ignored-its-own-early-climate-change-warnings/Despite its efforts for nearly two decades to raise doubts about the science of climate change, newly discovered company documents show that as early as 1977, Exxon research scientists warned company executives that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere and that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame. The internal records are detailed in a new investigation published Wednesday by InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization covering energy and the environment. The investigation found that long before global warming emerged as an issue on the national agenda, Exxon formed an internal brain trust that spent more than a decade trying to understand the impact of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere — even launching a supertanker with custom-made instruments to sample and understand whether the oceans could absorb the rising atmospheric CO2 levels. Today, Exxon says the study had nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but an Exxon researcher involved in the project remembered it differently in the below video, which was produced by FRONTLINE in association with the InsideClimate News report. In 1978, the Exxon researchers warned that a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius and would have a major impact on the company’s core business. “Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical,” one scientist wrote in an internal document. The warnings would later grow more urgent. In a 1982 document marked “not to be distributed externally,” the company’s environmental affairs office wrote that preventing global warming would require sharp cuts in fossil fuel use. Failure to do so, the document said, could result in “some potentially catastrophic events” that “might not be reversible.” Some on the Exxon internal research team saw the potential for a greater impact in their work. “This may be the kind of opportunity that we are looking for to have Exxon technology, management and leadership resources put into the context of a project aimed at benefitting mankind,” Harold N. Weinberg, an Exxon manager, wrote in a March 1978 internal memo. But in the mid-1980s, collapsing oil prices, among other pressures, pushed Exxon to change course, according to the Inside Climate News investigation, widening a gulf between its research arm and the company’s executive suite. The report notes that by the 1990s: Exxon helped to found and lead the Global Climate Coalition, an alliance of some of the world’s largest companies seeking to halt government efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. Exxon used the American Petroleum Institute, right-wing think tanks, campaign contributions and its own lobbying to push a narrative that climate science was too uncertain to necessitate cuts in fossil fuel emissions. “Let’s agree there’s a lot we really don’t know about how climate change will change in the 21st century and beyond,” Lee Raymond, the company’s former chairman and chief executive officer told an audience in a 1997 speech to the World Petroleum Conference. In a written response to the InsideClimate News investigation, an Exxon spokesman said that, “At all times, the opinions and conclusions of our scientists and researchers on this topic have been solidly within the mainstream of the consensus scientific opinion of the day and our work has been guided by an overarching principle to follow where the science leads. The risk of climate change is real and warrants action.” While it’s impossible to know where the climate change debate would be today without Exxon’s early decision to shift course on the science, the about-face was a lost opportunity in the overall effort to slow the rise of CO2 emissions, according to one climate researcher interviewed by InsideClimate News. “All it would have taken is for one prominent fossil fuel CEO to know this was about more than just shareholder profits, and a question about our legacy,” said Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “But now because of the cost of inaction — what I call the ‘procrastination penalty’ — we face a far more uphill battle.”
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Post by the Scribe on May 5, 2020 16:46:14 GMT
Nothing surprises me coming from the Fossil Fuel Fruitcakes. I know global warming is real; that human activity is causing it; and that we are headed, in my opinion, for another year of extreme weather events in 2016. We are ending 2015 here in L.A. with only slightly warmer weather than last New Year's Eve; and we are looking at perhaps the beginnings of El Nino's effects, with four cold Pacific storms poised to move through Southern California in the first full week of the new year.
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