Thursday, March 18, 2010
Climate change the story and the controversy
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm
Global warming is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. Climate change is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earths temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earths atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the suns ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isnt helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis Esq for his research
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm
Global warming is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. Climate change is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earths temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earths atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the suns ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isnt helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis Esq for his research
Labels: Arthur Dobelis
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:48 AM 
