Posted on 12/13/2001 6:26:31 AM PST by dfwgator
These scientists need to check this out immediately!
The more scary reports they issue, the more grant money they can rake in.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN!
"Findings" vs. "Facts" In Washington (re: Global Climate Change Act of 2001/2)
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 12, 2001
Author: Patrick J. MichaelsThe Reality of 'Global Warming'
Source: NewsMax.com; Published: June 13, 2001
Author: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
It is my opinion that the historical climate shifts (and the current warming trend) are caused by changes in the sun. All stars are variable stars at some level; perfectly ordinary stars will significantly change their temperature and luminosity very suddenly, and stay that way indefinitely.
Yep, during the Little Ice Age there were no sunspots observed on the surface of the Sun. It's amazing the lengths to which the global warming crowd will go in order to justify a change to carbon-based economies - if anything, this report shows that human activity doesn't have an signficant impact compared to natural cycles...
Like in programming: constants aren't; variables don't.
rise of mean temperature of the world ->
melting northern polar ice cap ->
Europe turns into Siberia (or Kamtchaka).
This warm temperature brings really cold weather in the Europe. Then, are we have global warming or global cooling preceded by small global warming ?
It is my guess that initial rise of mean temperature of Earth will create different changes in different parts of Earth. Once I watched a PBS NOVA documentary where a Princeton professor, who was the leading authority in climate modeling, has climate maps which agrees with this idea. Initial temperature change is viewed as a perturbation to the world climate system which are interlocked together. Europe's drastic cooling may be coupled with warming of Manchuria due to Ocean current changes in Pacific. The resulting mean temperature can be anywhere. Climate system is not a terribly stable system. Small changes can create wild gyrations before it settles in a new pattern for a while. Even without human releasing CO2 gas in the atmosphere, the system itself could just well escape out of old pattern on its own after a while.
I think that initial global warming may create cascade climate changes which can be drastic. But it is too much a leap to conclude that we will surely drown ice water from both poles because initial warming will surely results in more temperature increase.
I thought Hillary moved to New York.
Then, they realized that the geological record was chock full of such events, some occuring much more severely and quickly. This, of course, proved that global warming was a very serious threat that needed to be addressed immediately.
It's a beautiful theory in that all results (even those completely opposite to the theory's predictions) prove the theory.
That's some seriously good science, my friend.
Full Report:
Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises
Press Release: Possibility of Abrupt Climate Change Needs Research and Attention
Most climate-change research has focused on gradual changes, such as the processes by which emissions of greenhouse gases lead to warming of the planet. But new evidence shows that periods of gradual change in Earth's past were punctuated by episodes of abrupt change, including temperature changes of about 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit, in only a decade in some places. Severe floods and droughts also marked periods of abrupt change.
A new report from the National Academies' National Research Council says greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the climate system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. Researchers do not know enough about such events to accurately predict them, so surprises are inevitable.
If the planet's climate is being forced to change -- as is currently the case -- it increases the number of possible mechanisms that can trigger abrupt events, the report says. And the more rapid the forced change that is taking place, the more likely it is that abrupt events will occur on a time scale that has immediate human and ecological consequences.
There is no need for undue alarm, however, about the possibility of sudden climate change, because societies have learned to adapt to these changes over the course of human history, said the committee that wrote the report. Nevertheless, the committee said research into the causes, patterns, and likelihood of abrupt climate change is the best way to reduce its impact. Overall, research should be aimed at improving modeling and statistical analysis of abrupt changes. An important focus of the research should be on mechanisms that lead to sudden climate changes during warm periods, with an eye to providing realistic estimates of the likelihood of extreme events. Poor countries may need more help preparing for abrupt climate change since they lack scientific and economic resources.
The planet's past climate record also needs to be understood better, according to the report. Scientists have a variety of means to study what the climate was like thousands of years ago. For example, researchers look at tree rings to examine the frequency of droughts and analyze gas bubbles trapped in ice cores to measure past atmospheric conditions. With such techniques, scientists have discovered repeated instances of especially large and abrupt climate changes over the last 100,000 years during the slide into and climb out of the most recent ice age. For instance, the warming at the end of the last ice age triggered an abrupt cooling period, which finished with an especially abrupt warming about 12,000 years ago. Since then, less dramatic -- though still rapid -- climate changes have occurred, affecting precipitation, hurricanes, and the El Niño events that occasionally disrupt temperatures in the tropical Pacific. Examples of abrupt change in the past century include a rapid warming of the North Atlantic from 1920 to 1930 and the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.
Simulating abrupt climate changes using computer models is particularly difficult because most climate models respond in a linear manner in which a doubling of the factor forcing change -- greenhouse gases, for instance -- doubles the response. However, abrupt climate changes show that a small forcing may cause a small change, or may force the climate system across a threshold and trigger huge change. A massive discharge of fresh water from lakes dammed by melting ice sheets, which suddenly changes climate conditions worldwide, is an example of threshold-crossing. Chaotic behavior in the climate also may push it across a threshold without any apparent external forcing.
The collapse of some ancient civilizations has been associated with abrupt climate changes, especially severe droughts, but humans have shown great resilience as well. Fast changes make adaptation more difficult, so research should be pursued to identify strategies that reduce vulnerabilities and increase the adaptability of economic and ecological systems, the committee said. It noted that many proactive policies might provide benefits regardless of whether abrupt climate change occurs. Some steps that deserve careful scrutiny include reducing emissions to slow global warming, improving climate forecasting, slowing biodiversity loss, and improving water, land, and air quality.
The report was sponsored by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with additional support from the National Bureau of Economic Research Program on International Environmental Economics at Yale University. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows [click link].
The thing is, research on the paleoclimate record indicates that these sudden climate shifts are the norm, rather than the exception. One of Europe's biggest climate concerns is that warming might trigger a substantial reduction in the rate of formation of deep water in the North Atlantic, which would cause a very drastic cooling much more severe than the "Little Ice Age". As the study notes, it is very difficult to determine the trigger point for such a shift, because models are primarily linear and they don't simulate non-linear processes well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.