I used to be “warmer” to the idea that climate change is a serious problem. That was, until the folks started intentionally exagerrating claims in order to “get our attention” and to want to spend 5o times more funds to prevent change than even the worst case damage scenarios portray. But when these sorts of things continue to get the silent treatment, in prevents us from thinking harder about the impacts of warming, and other things that might be going on. It prevents us from thinking harder about just how much we really know about climate modeling. It prevents us from asking serious questions about what the worst damages from warming are likely to be.
Here is the latest:
Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era
Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.
Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:
A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.
Figure 1. Standardized values of the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009 (adapted from Tedesco and Monaghan, 2009).The silence surrounding this publication was deafening.
It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs).
My emphasis added. I ask students regularly, why are we concerned about climate change? Isn’t it because of the expected negative impacts on humans and animal life? If warming does not seem to be impacting those things, then what is the concern? And if there is concern, does it make sense to remake the entire world economy? Sadly, the more I think about this issue, the more I lean toward believing that some in the climate change community simply WANT it to happen because that is their next death sentence against a free-enterprise society. And believe me, when climate change doesn’t pan out, or if we are somehow able to mitigate the damages efficiently, some other crisis will come along that requires unprecedented global action, and a rethinking of how we live our lives.
But ideas and merit no longer matter. “Consensus” does … and all consensus means is that many people who do not have the slightest clue about how the world works, agree with each other that their superstitions are correct. That is why there is a consensus that the minimum wage helps the poor. That is why there is a consensus that labor regulations protect workers. That is why there is a consensus that when I respond to higher taxes by working less, there is really no loss to society. All bunk.
If I had a genie, I would not ask for wealth or fame or any of that. One of my wishes would be to have access to an unbiased and temperate source of scientific truth. I don’t believe we human beings are generally capable of producing it, or recognizing it if it were there.
It’s a shame, Professor, that you don’t actually spend a few minutes to actually verify the information you’re posting, and citing the conclusion of some blogger rather than reading the actual article and forming your own.
Having attended yesteray’s presentation by Dr. Steven Chu’s (energy secretary, nobel prize winner), and having seen the graphs he presented, I was interested in what the scale in the “Standardized Melting Anomaly” was, so I did a quick google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=“Standardized+Melting+Anomaly”
The results? Exactly two, from a message board. Well, that’s pretty odd, isn’t it?
So I decided to look at the study referenced at the bottom, wondering if it actually exists and what it actually says. Thanks to our wonderful database system, it took me about 30 seconds to find it:
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0918/2009GL039186/
(Link might not work outside of UofR)
So what does it actually say? Let me quote the conclusion from the study:
“Negative melting anomalies observed in recent years do not contradict recently published results on surface temperature trends over Antarctica [e.g., Steig et al., 2009]. The time period used for those studies extends back to the 1950’s, well beyond 1980, and the largest temperature increases are found during winter and spring rather than summer, and are generally limited to West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. Summer SAM trends have increased since the 1970s [Marshall, 2003], suppressing warming over much of Antarctica during the satellite melt record [Turner et al., 2005]. Moreover, melting and surface temperature are not necessarily linearly related because the entire surface energy balance must be considered [Liston and Winther, 2005; Torinesi et al., 2003].”
Yep, that sure disproves the claims of the effects of the warming!
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