What do you think of a U.S. climate researcher's claim of only a decade left to address "global warming"?

Question

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51992

Answer 1

It's funny - for every 10 scientists you find that believe in global warming - you will find another 10 that say it's hype and unsubstantiated. What we all need to realize is that the 20 I just mentioned are all biased. Thier beliefs, education and environment dictate which direction they lean - since I am sure most of them vote - they probably even lean based on their political choice. The bottom line here is that you will only see what people want you to see - whether it be orgs, media, companies with an interest (oil, whatever), writers - etc... it's all an opinion one way or the other... and unless you decide to quit your job and study climate for 15 years - you will never REALLY know the truth....

Answer 2

If it were jsut a few, some cooks with alternative motives (such as business or political sponsors), or someone other than a broad range of scientists, I would question it.

However, the few, cooks, those with alternative motives, and the narrow range of scientists fall on the other side.

The climate is a complex model. A minor shift turns Greenland into a snow covered near wasteland.

It is rediculous to think we can change temperatures on a global scale several degrees or change the makeup of the atmosphere on a global scale several percent and not risk severe consequences.

The 10 year mark is based on research of past rapid climate changes, and the concepts that there are thresholds beyond which ocean currents and air flows change rapidly, altering the way cold and hot air is exchanged between the poles and the ropics.

This exchange is a remarkable and fragile process as Greenland shows. Cross over a threshold and alter or remove this exchange and anything resulting is bad for someone.

It would be naieve and wishful thinking bot to believe them, choosing instead to believe we can alter the world temp and change the makeup of the atmosphere indefinitely with no svere side effects.

Answer 3

Got a link?


Thanks.

I think it's kind of ironic that people think politics is clouding the scientists ability to present high quality unbiased research/ predictions.

The Bush admin declared war on scientists from day one. Intelligent design, stem cell research, global warming, basicly anything that got in the way of their religious agenda got steam rolled.

Scientists in the field are not at all conflicted about the data as some (like genie below) would have you believe. Climatologists are in agreement about global warming. Evolutionary biologists are in agreement about evolutionary biology. Stem cell researchers are in agreement about the importance of embryonic stem cells.

Conservative god squads (non scientists) are the dissenters and they dissent on the basis of the science disagreeing with what their faith says.

It's sad, really, that our country is dumbed down this way.

Ah well , two more years of it...

Answer 4

Scientists schmientists.

Science in the USA is being undermined by the Christian right. If the Bible warned against Global Warming you can bet that it would be taken a lot more seriously! The Bible seems to be the only publication that has any political clout right now.

It's a crying shame.

Answer 5

i believe it has merit...ive been to some of the places up north ,i was shocked to see NO ICEBERGS,i mean think of it ,at no time in our history have there been no icebergs ,i believe man as a whole needs to address global warming yesterday ,for our sake i hope that we come to our senses on this issue ,were talking the whole ball game here ,,,scary

Answer 6

I don't believe we have enough info to make such claims. I believe that Global Warming is a problem and that we need to take action today, but remember the damage we see today is in large part to accumulations that have been growing for decades.

The changes we make today will help, but could take years for us to see.

So if we only have a decade....well then we are already screwed.

Answer 7

Its a Very small window most scientist agree with Hansen.
The human-caused buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases is mainly to blame for rising ocean temperatures that fuel intense hurricanes such as Katrina, according to Boulder researchers and their colleagues.During the past year, more than a dozen studies have looked at possible links between global warming and recent increases in hurricane intensity.

Opposing camps of scientists have debated the relative contributions of natural climate variability and human activities - mainly the burning of fossil fuels.

Authors of the latest report, published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say their work substantially strengthens the chain of evidence pointing to humans.

"The work that we've done kind of closes the loop," said Tom Wigley, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

Three NCAR researchers and colleagues from eight other institutions looked at long-term changes in sea-surface temperatures, or SSTs.

"The important conclusion is that the observed SST increases in these hurricane breeding grounds cannot be explained by natural processes alone," Wigley said. "The best explanation for these changes has to include a large human influence."

Several prominent hurricane researchers said the new study supplies the missing link that ties human activities to a big increase, during the past 30 years, in the number and proportion of intense hurricanes.

But longtime Colorado State University hurricane forecaster William Gray called the paper a desperate attempt "to push the steady drumbeat of human-induced climate warming."

And National Hurricane Center scientist Chris Landsea said that the paper "doesn't address the real key issues that are involved in this hurricane and climate-change controversy."

Those issues include the sensitivity of hurricanes to small changes in ocean temperature and the reliability of decades-old hurricane records, Landsea said.

"There's nothing wrong with the paper. But I don't think it's really a big advance in the field," he said. "I think it reconfirms what just about everybody already thought."

In the past century, ocean temperatures in hurricane-forming regions of the tropical Atlantic and Pacific have increased 0.6 degrees to 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Last year, MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel reported a strong correlation between the warming oceans and increasing hurricane intensity.

NCAR scientists and their colleagues took the next step.

They used 22 state-of-the-art computerized global climate models to determine what's causing the ocean warming.

They looked at the output of more than 80 simulations using models developed at 15 research institutions around the world. The simulations allowed the researchers to examine the roles of various factors that affect climate, including variations in the sun's output, volcanic eruptions, changes in ozone levels and greenhouse gases.

Previous efforts to understand the observed ocean warming have focused on temperature changes averaged over large ocean areas, such as the entire Atlantic or Pacific basins. The new study targeted much smaller hurricane-formation regions in those oceans.

For the period 1906 to 2005, the researchers found that human activities - primarily an increase in greenhouse gas emissions - account for at least 67 percent of the observed temperature rises.

The new work shows that "those regions in which hurricanes are born, the hurricane genesis regions, are clearly being influenced by global warming," said Robert Corell, of the American Meteorological Society.

But University of Colorado climatologist Roger Pielke Sr. said the claim that humans are responsible for at least 67 percent of the warming "overstates the capabilities of the (climate) models."

Answer 8

I would say that from the readings taken 100 years ago, we are one degree warmer on average. I would doubt the accuracy of the thermometer used as we were still crapping outdoors back then.

Does this mean we only have to listen to this blabber 10 more years?

Answer 9

hogwash, how does he account for higher temperatures than we have now, during the mid-holocene? when we were all living in caves (and Not burning evil fossil fuels, gasp!)?

Yes the Earth is warming, But it is a natural cyclical phenomenon, atleast that is what the ice core samples suggest.

(do you libs even know what the mid-holocene was or do you drink gore's kool aid hook line and sinker?)

Answer 10

world net daily is a joke. got any real sources?