Change you can believe in. I’ve wondered often why the assumption of a large Climate Science™ body is so against warmer weather. As many here are noting, I do understand that CO2 will absolutely warm the planet. Still I am more skeptical than many as to whether that warming attributed to CO2 has been, or even can be, detected. Attribution studies are woefully inadequate and not due to inept scientists as much as the difficulty of the problem. The fact that some are even published is due to ineptness though as I have finished papers thinking the answer is – we don’t really know – but you can guess that that isn’t what was written.
Warmer is bad.
Why?
Being a multicellular air breathing organism, I like warm. I do also like polar bears but my guess is that they don’t mind warm either. We are only talking about a few degrees and that is NOT enough to end sea ice. We know for a fact that there are endless positive effects of a warmer planet and have only been able to come up with a few negative ones. The positive includes more plants, more area for animals to graze, more water in the air, less clothing on beaches etc.. Negatives, as written, are unproven. For instance, the melting of the ice caps. We have seen some summer ice shrinkage in the Arctic and some growth in the Antarctic. We have also seen that the caps refreeze every year with an abruptness corresponding to the very cold temperatures of the poles. Shocker!! Not a few C below freezing but several tens of degrees. I frankly don’t see the planetary doom in that.
Antarctic ice isn’t melting any time soon and glaciers aren’t vanishing as advertised. We all know that this isn’t the story the media and scientists are selling but it IS reality.
So what is really wrong with being warmer? What if we do see those temp increases the government organized IPCC predicts? I don’t really understand people’s incredible ability to react to unproven scenarios of destruction, simply because the scenario was stated. Shut off the power because we are worrying about an unproven ‘end of the world’ claim makes as much sense as not eating so we can save ourselves from heart disease. The world isn’t this clean pristine operating room environment which must be left undisturbed. It is a home in which we live and should care for, but that doesn’t mean we have to try and hold its weather static. The Earth doesn’t hold it static itself anyway. It prefers being colder and that is really bad news for us and I would also guess, the polar bears.
the Air Vent 
Jeff, I keep going back to the USDA hardiness maps. When I want to see what a major (OMG) 32 degree change would be it is right there on the maps. No surprises, and no mysteries. Oh, and no concerns, because even a 10C difference is well within livable range. For me it’s a FL VayCay all year, ans still is no concern.
So I agree. What’s the issue with warming?
Hey Jeff, Glad to see you posting again. I just put out a post on an alternative source for El Nino/El Nina that seems to make more sense than hot air over the Western Pacific. It’s long, but hopefully interesting.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18003
Cheers, AJStrata
“So what is really wrong with being warmer?”
We do not know because we have not experienced significant warming. The one sold by CRU or GISS does not exist. Current temperatures are similar to those of the early twentieth century. Thus we learn from glaciers, trees, snow cover and all possible proxies.
Dinosaurs, great big animals, abundant- big plants to feed big animals, lots of seeohtwo to feed these abundant-big plants, hothouse earth out of control, end of the planet as we know it. Have I got this right?
2 AJ – Keep an eye out at Science of Doom. He has a post in the works on Coriolis which I think will be worth reading. My expectation is that angular momentum effects will also play out in water circulations and I would also expect this to be a reasonably well trodden path.
Re: the post you link to and geothermal. FWIW I wonder about these effects – it has been on my mind since the Antarctic work Jeff et al did. I haven’t seen anything that seems sensible on why the peninsular exhibits different temp. characteristics to the rest of the continent. I raised the point on a couple of threads along with links to volcanic sites and activity in Antarctica but the idea was poo poo’ed by people more knowledgeable than I. Reading temp. numbers in this link my expctation is that somebody will have done an energy flux sum to check the numbers involved (average deltaT 3 to 5 degF over six months) :
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ElNino/
“… less clothing on beaches etc… ”
That’s a positive effect? If you’re talking about MY clothing, it’s most definitely a negative. A parka, though… now that would flatter my natural form!
I don’t think it is getting warmer. It is cooling.
Go here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Pick Annual, Table, Rank
1934 is the 3rd warmest year in US history and the warmest is only .25F warmer.
1934 was warmer than every year this century except for 2006.
1934,1931,1930 and 1938 were warmer than 2011.
1934,1931,1930, 1938 and 1933 were warmer than 2010.
And if you sort by year, with 117 being the hottest year, 2011,2010,2009 and 2008 didn’t even break 100.
“Antarctic ice isn’t melting any time soon and glaciers aren’t vanishing as advertised”….there is a new ad agency going to antarctic as we speak. I am sure they will find ice melting, probably at an alrming rate, and certainly higher temps solely due to co2. cant wait to hear their report. should be fun.
Most of the Holocene was warmer than today. Recently we have been bouncing back from the chilly Little Ice Age. The History Channel’s “Little Ice Age – Big Chill” tells it from a historian’s perspective.
The archaeological evidence supports the idea that civilizations rose during the warm periods and collapsed during the cold ones.
Sane people will support your views about “Warm”. If Bruce is right we should start worrying about falling temperatures.
Oh for the late Eocene when it was so hot that mammals became abundant and there was no ice at either pole.
Walk around on the beach in a parka and ten bucks says you end up in a holding cell.
Mark
This was the Big Lie. And it was told over and over and over again. But it didn’t take.
It could have though, had the globe not started cooling.
=====================
Consider that most of the hypothesized AGW is to show up as higher winter low temperatures in temperate and polar zones. Consider that temperatures in the tropics are hypothesized to change only a minor amount. Consider that the average citizen when confronted with this kind of temperature change would say, bring it on, we want more. The rising temperature scenario is hopeless as a scare story to manipulate people. Hence, the conjuring of scary secondary climate effects based on poor to non-existent science. Loss of Arctic ice will kill off the polar bears, cyclonic storms will increase in power and frequency. Sea level rise will inundate coastal areas and the oceans will acidify. It’s all about manipulation of the public to achieve political ends.
Quote of the Week: from SEPP report:
“…we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…”
IPCC co-chair of Working Group 3, Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, November 13, 2010 interview
Maybe it’s simple psychology. “The planet has a fever!” Fever=Sickness. “Fire Bad!” (thank you Phil Hartman). “Don’t touch the stove, you’ll get burned.” The human mind just may be more conditioned to fear heat.
I have had three conversations with pro-warming people in the last few months, where they all expressed similar views that the only solution is to reduce the human population. I have learn’t now to ask whether they are proposing that they or their children etc go first. Surprisingly it is always someone else that should be reducing their reproduction!
One of the most difficult things to do, is to get modelers to engage on why a warming climate is so bad.
Most of the reasons that I see are nonsensical:
Example, warming temperatures will destroy habitat. Actually, we get 20-30 year period natural fluctuations in any given habitat that are of the same order as the largest predicted warming between now and 2100.
The polar bears are dying off. Actually, they aren’t, as we generally know. In addition to all of the other problems, the planes that do the assays have the same fuel capacity they did 20 years ago, and are flying the same patterns. As the ice patterns have shifted, I believe that the polar bears have simply shifted north, and out of range, of the assays. (Anyway, it’s no worse, and probably much less worse, than killing off the cougar in the US NE and other large predators in the SW, where we now have rats-of-hooves infestations in the form of elk that are overgrazing and destroying the land).
In terms of climate becoming more variable: I think the evidence is the opposite. Colder weather leads to greater variability, and is in general more dangerous for flora and fauna than warmer weather.
Droughts will become more common: Not what the models say. Some areas will get more drought, more of the Earth will green. Long term (century duration) drying and cooling in the regions around the “dry bels” has been happening periodically over the last 2000+ years. There is no evidence that the current warming will lead to anything that is in excess of what has been observed naturally.
Tropical diseases will rampage the globe, especially malaria: Malaria isn’t a tropical disease, it occurs in Alaska, Canada and Siberia too, and during the building of the Al-Can highway, it ravaged the work force building the highway. Most other diseases (flu) actually flourish in COLD WEATHER, not warm. And guess what…. there are millions of people who die each year from disease and it is PREVENTABLE using a fraction of the numbers of dollars that are being proposed to be spent on climate change. Only the next century the number of preventable deaths could be as high as one BILLION. The number of deaths from climate change in comparison are microscopic (it’s even arguable that there will be a net mortality once you factor in beneficial effects, such as increased farm production). If you need any examples to tell you just how transparent and hollow the arguments by the socialists who want to control CO2 production (and with it, redistribute wealth and address their etherial notions about “social justice”), this is probably the best example.
There is actually an argument for expecting strengthening of certain types of storms, and I don’t see anyway to push that argument aside. However, the effects we are talking about that generate this strengthening (increasing the height of the convective cap, increased diabatic heating, etc), are ubiquitous in nature, and I believe the effects from natural variability again swamp those expected from the warming between now and 2100.
In general, if we look at natural variability and it’s impact on us, between now and 2100, natural variability swamps us in about all directions, except perhaps one: The rise of the oceans. Even on that one, other human activities such as destroying natural habitats are having a greater effect than the relatively small ocean level rises (less than 0.5-m or 1.5-ft is a typical upper bound). What people who don’t look at these questions in detail don’t know, is that the biosphere actually is responsible for maintaing the ocean-land boundaries. In North and South Carolina, it is the cypress swamps. If we have a major storm and there is erosion along the coast lines, the cypress swamps pick up the slack and “resuscitate” the coast line to maintain the same original elevation. (A little facts sheet on cypress swamps can be found here.) From the cypress tree’s perspective there’s not that big of a difference between being inundated because a hurricane chewed away part of the coast line, and (relatively slow) changes in sea level associated with climate change (the cypress swamps just build up the land to accommodate the slightly higher sea levels…figuratively they are protecting their turf).
Guess which has a bigger impact: Global warming or clear cutting the cypress swamps, on the ability of the cypress swamp to adapt to changes in the relative height of the sea level to land?
Other examples are mangrove swamps in the tropics, and parrot fish on coral atolls. In all of these three cases, the bigger environmental threat is human encroachment on the biosphere, than the boogie man of CO2 increase.
And with that, I’ve not run out of examples, just time to post.
does it ever occur to polar bear lovers that, if food gets scarce where they are, they will wander south in search of food…imagine a population of polar bears pigging out on Californian sea-lions and surfers!
Diogenes, since polar bears are sexually compatible with brown bears, over time the two populations will intermix, and you’ll end up with them reintegrated into the general brown bear population. (And probably the loss of the characteristics that were beneficial for them when hunting on ice, namely white fur and the large size needed to kill large sea mammals.)
Carrick,
“sexually compatible”
I almost snorted my coffee!
I usually hear that expression WRT to human sexual relationships, not mating between polar bears and brown bears. Maybe “reproductively compatible” would be better. 😉
diogenes said
January 30, 2012 at 1:32 pm
That’s why we should be able to shoot em.
500 to 1000 polar bears are shot each year (500+ legally in Canada). It ain’t AGW shooting them.
I vote for the Minoan Optimum. ASAP, please!
Hybrid polar/Kodiak bears are a buffer population, perhaps, between temperature regimes. When it gets warmer, the average p-K-bear population gets darker by cross-breeding. When it gets colder, the whiter ones go north and breed out the brown again.
SteveF, “sexually compatible” and “reproductively compatible”. Only real difference is the second, is a subset of the first, reserved for people of opposite sex.
In other words, gay polar bears …. oh never mind. Too many South Park episodes viewed.
is the white gene recessive, like the blonde gene in Nordic women?
I just saw an NBC commercial explaining how we should turn our effing lights off to go green.
dumber than a box of rocks.
half a box.
Watch out for blondie bears. The Komodo, aka Spirit bear, is an albino-ish strain whose isolated range in British Columbia is now protected. Lots of hype, lots of power to stop forestry, pipelines and progress. wikibleedia has more.
Carrick,
“Too many South Park episodes viewed.”
Gay polar bears?!? I actually think your total irreverence for all sacred cows would make you a valuable South Park contributor.
Jeff Condon said
January 30, 2012 at 8:22 pm
“I just saw an NBC commercial explaining how we should turn our effing lights off to go green. ”
Come on, Jeff. Watching NBC is bad for your brain! You need to be watching “Top Gear” and “Top Shot” on the History Channel as an antidote …
By the way, here’s is the list from Number Watch of all the bad stuff we’re in for from global warming…
A complete list of things caused by global warming…(the warmlist)
I think the latest thinking on a warmer globe (for which I see many benefits but do not rule detrimental effects) will go straight to the issue of sea level rising and will be put in terms of Hasenian tipping points and fast changes. I saw a NOVA episode last night that dealt with the increased travel rate of glaciers in Greenland. Much time was spent viewing the large amount of melt water that collects in lakes and then suddenly disappears in a matter of hours. For entertainment purposes I can see why the show dwelled on that point as the photographic opportunities were obvious. In the end they estimated that the lubrication of the water between the glacier and the bedrock accounted for about 10% of the increased speed of the glaciers advancement.
A small amount of time was devoted to a theory about the warmer and saltier water towards the bottom of where the glacier meets the sea influencing the melting by being sucked into place by the colder melt water at the sea surface. No real pictures were provided but rather animated diagrams were used. The take away after carefully listening to what the experts were saying was that all these theories carried with them lots of uncertainty but that their gut feeling or “expert opinion” was to be afraid – very afraid. A separate part of the piece attempted to make a case for a one meter rise in sea level having devastating affects worldwide.
It is, of course, difficult to determine how well these theories have been developed and shown to operate in practice with a program that obviously started with an end result in mind. I know I have heard comments from NicL when we were discussing S(09) and O(10) on this blog that indicated that sea water warming at the lower depths is not something that is entirely of a recent occurrence – if I remember correctly.
Jeff Condon said
January 30, 2012 at 8:22 pm
“I just saw an NBC commercial explaining how we should turn our effing lights off to go green.
dumber than a box of rocks.”
I presume that also included the light from your picture tube.
Alan:
Picture tube???
You still own one of those motley old things?
I agree Jeff, warm is good (MSM predicted the UK would be basking in the warmth by now back in the heyday of this cr-p).
guess what, were still freezing in winter, were is that warming going?
ok, I have heard its somewhere else (Greenland melts under heat stress etc…)
& don’t dis the polar bears, they know where you live you know 🙂
ps – is it a language problem by i would love more input from outside the US/UK/ENGLISH speaking scientific community.
.
Jeff Condon said
January 30, 2012 at 3:02 pm
diogenes said
January 30, 2012 at 1:32 pm
That’s why we should be able to shoot em.
Eh, not clear….we should shoot the poley bears or the surfers?? 🙂