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Darryl Fears reports in the Washington Post that according to the government's newest national assessment of climate change, Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming. "For a long time we have perceived climate change as an issue that's distant, affecting just polar bears or something that matters to our kids," says Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and lead co-author of the changing climate chapter of the assessment. "This shows it's not just in the future; it matters today. Many people are feeling the effects." The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest. "Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Insurance rates are rising in some vulnerable locations, and insurance is no longer available in others. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the spring, last later into the fall, and burn more acreage. In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and autumn storms now cause more erosion, threatening many communities with relocation."
The report concludes that over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly and that increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. "What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas, with additional contributions from forest clearing and some agricultural practices."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @05:05PM
Here are just a few reasons I don't believe:
1. AGW is not science because it's unfalsifiable. Whenever doubt arises, they just move the goal posts further.
2. 17 years of non-warming.
3. Climatologists can't successfully predict the future, nor explain past data. They have no more predictive power than the naive position of "no change", let a lone a crystal ball or magic 8-ball. The IPCC releases "projections" not even actual predictions.
4. It's easy to make predictions can't be falsified over hundreds of years. Is this really science?
5. Climatologists may make forecasts about science, but do not follow evidence-based principles of forecasting (Armstrong).
6. Computers have gotten thousands of times faster, and they still can't predict.
7. What kind of experimental evidence is there? Show me the experiments with Earth A, Earth B, and Earth C.
8. In the Ordovician there was well over 10x the CO2 we had now; Earth did not turn into Venus.
9. Any series with a red noise power spectral distribution, e.g. a Wiener process, obeys an arcsine law such that extrema are more likely to occur near the edge of any given interval. Claiming everything nowadays is "extreme" may simply be casting basic mathematical truths as platitudes.
10. Constantly revising past records to be cooler does not mean the Earth is warming. It suggests fraud.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by MrSome on Wednesday May 07 2014, @05:44PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson 'The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.'
Please provide your alternate theory that explains why each of the items at the bottom of the linked page below are happening.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence [nasa.gov]
This is how science works... you have to provide positive evidence for why your theory explains these items better than the current theory.
Stop just saying, "I don't believe it." Provide a better explanation.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @06:46PM
>You don't have to buy into it, it's observed.
What's observed? 17 years of non-warming while CO2 keeps increasing?
If this doesn't falsify AGW, what would?
(Score: 1) by MrSome on Thursday May 08 2014, @09:56PM
If you're referring to the David Rose article that every news outlet ran with, that was already dismissed as cherry picked data.
The earth has been warming since 1997. You can find the data with NOAA and NASA if you would like to research a little bit.
But let's forget about all that... go back to my original link, and please explain all of the observed changes the earth is going through. And provide positive evidence for your alternate theory.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @07:02PM
Your NASA link says there is a "97%" consensus on AGW.
But the true value is below 1%. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-con sensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math -errors/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
"“It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors’ own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%... Cook’s paper provides the clearest available statistical evidence that there is scarcely any explicit support among scientists for the consensus that the IPCC, politicians, bureaucrats, academics and the media have so long and so falsely proclaimed"
(Score: 1) by MrSome on Thursday May 08 2014, @10:37PM
If you truly don't believe there is a scientific consensus on the subject of climate change, and that's your only hang up, then why don't you go through the sources list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on _climate_change [wikipedia.org]
But beyond that, I still am waiting on your response. If increased CO2 isn't causing the situations listed on that page, then please provide me with your alternate theory and the positive evidence that supports that theory and explains those observed changes on Earth.