Grist | Topics | 384 Results

RESULTS		Results 326 – 350 of 384
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
'The Medieval Warm Period was just as warm as today' Repetition of this point has failed to make it any more true	Coby Beck	15 Dec 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: It was just as warm in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) as it is today. In fact, Greenland was green and they were growing grapes in England! Answer: There is no good evidence that the MWP was a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that exhibited notable warmth -- Europe, for example -- but all global proxy reconstructions agree it is warmer ...
Topics: climate science, climate change skepticism, climate, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum' In fact, the warmth of this period was not global and not like today.	Coby Beck	14 Dec 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum than it is today -- without any human influence. Answer: Though some temperatures during that period were in the same range as today, they were confined to the northern hemisphere and the summer months. What's more, the cause is understood (orbital forcing similar to what controlled the Ice Ages), just as today's cause is understood (CO2 emissi ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Hansen has been wrong before' Maybe, but not about the climate!	Coby Beck	14 Dec 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: In 1988, Hansen predicted dire warming over the next decade -- and he was off by 300%. Why in the world should we listen to the same doom and gloom from him today? Answer: While in some instances it is ignorant repetition of misinformation, at its source this story is a plain lie. In 1988, James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate on the danger of anthropogenic global warming. During that t ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic, James Hansen (all these topics)

Global warming: worry, don't panic It's a disaster, not a catastrophe	Gar Lipow	02 Dec 2006	Gristmill
A Guardian story suggests that we may have as much as eight degrees of global warming already locked in, in the form of stored heat in the ocean. But a substantial stored-heat backlog in the ocean has been well-known for some time. That it is greater than expected is bad news -- but (as I've confirmed in correspondence with Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate) this does not mean that all or most of that stored heat is going to 'come back' and fry the planet, provided we take act ...
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate science (all these topics)

Could the Sun be causing climate change? It's likely not the primary cause	Andrew Dessler	25 Nov 2006	Gristmill
In climate change debates, one hears a lot about the Sun. A favorite argument of those opposed to action is that the warming we're presently experiencing is due to increases in solar output, also known as solar brightening, and not from greenhouse gases. Before critiquing this argument, first remember what the IPCC says about human contribution to climate change: There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is at ...
Topics: climate, climate science (all these topics)

'They predicted global cooling in the 1970s' There was a bit of speculation, but nothing even remotely resembling today's consensus	Coby Beck	24 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: The alarmists were predicting the onset of an ice age in the '70s. Now it's too much warming! Why should we believe them this time? Answer: It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today's reveals a huge difference.Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies a ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'If we can't understand the past, how can we understand the present?' Understanding what is happening right under our noses does not require paleoclimate perfection	Coby Beck	23 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Climate science can't even fully explain why the climate did what it did in the past. How can they claim to know what is going on today? Answer: There are two requirements for understanding what happened at a particular point of climate change in geological history. One is an internally consistent theory based on physical principles; the other is sufficient data to determine the physical p ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Chaotic systems are not predictable' Sure, but who says climate is chaotic?	Coby Beck	22 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Climate is an inherently chaotic system, and as such its behavior can not be predicted. Answer: Firstly, let's make sure we define climate: an average of weather patterns over some meaningful time period. We may thus discount the chaotic annual fluctuations of global mean temperature. That's weather, and one or two anomalous years does not represent a climate shift. Quite a few people beli ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

The CO2-temperature correlation It's more complicated than you might think	Andrew Dessler	21 Nov 2006	Gristmill
Most people interested in climate change have seen the plots showing strong correlations between CO2 and temperature going back several hundred thousand years: FIGURE: Data from the Vostok ice core in Antarctica, from 410,000 years ago to the present. The top curve shows abundance of CO2 (in parts per million) from air bubbles in the ice core. The bottom curve shows the temperature anomaly in the Antarctic region, relative to the present, from isotopic measur ...
Topics: climate, climate science, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

'We can't even predict the weather next week' But weather is not climate -- that's why we have two distinct words	Coby Beck	21 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Scientists can't even predict the weather next week, so why should we believe what some climate model tells us about 100 years from now? Answer: Climate and weather are very different things, and the level of predictability is comparably different. Climate is defined as weather averaged over a period of time -- generally around 30 years. This averaging smooths out the random and unpredic ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Aerosols should mean more warming in the south' Greater Northern Hemisphere warming is well-understood	Coby Beck	20 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Scientists claim that global warming from greenhouse gases is being countered somewhat by global dimming from aerosol pollution. They even claim that aerosol pollution caused the cooling in the mid-century. But GHGs are evenly mixed around the globe, while aerosols are disproportionately concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. It follows that warming should be greater in the Southern Hemisp ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Climate models are unproven' Actually, GCM's have many confirmed successes under their belts	Coby Beck	19 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Why should we trust a bunch of contrived computer models that have never had a prediction confirmed? Talk to me in 100 years. Answer: Given the absence of a few duplicate planets and some large time machines, we can't test a 100-year temperature projection. Does that mean the models can't be validated without waiting 100 years? No. The climate is an extremely complex system. Our observations of ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Models don't take clouds into account' Clouds are complex and uncertain, but are not likely to save us from warming	Coby Beck	18 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Clouds are a large negative feedback that will stop any drastic warming. The climate models don't even take cloud effects into account. Answer: All of the atmospheric global climate models used for the kind of climate projections synthesized by the IPCC take the effects of clouds into account. You can read a discussion about cloud processes and feedbacks in the IPCC TAR. It is true, however, th ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

The price of a climatologist's soul Oceanographer Tim Barnet reveals the dollar amount, and other fascinating points	Kit Stolz	17 Nov 2006	Gristmill
Tim Barnett, a leading oceanographer who just retired from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this Monday gave a talk called Future Climate of Earth: A Sneak Preview [PDF] to a convention of fire ecologists in San Diego. Barnett began by saying that he had seven grandkids, and he didn't like to think about the world they were going to inherit from us. He then went on to succinctly explain why we know global warming is human-caused.Most of the warming in the earth is sto ...
Topics: climate science, greenhouse-gas emissions, James Hansen (all these topics)

'Peiser refuted Oreskes' In a poor piece of work that has been retracted by its author	Coby Beck	17 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Sure, Oreskes found no one bucking the consensus, but her paper was refuted by Benny Peiser, who did the exact same survey and found very different results. Answer: True, Benny Peiser did attempt a similar study and submitted it as a letter to Science responding to the Oreskes study. But for very good reasons, it was not published. Peiser claimed to find 34 articles in his 'reject or doubt t ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Consensus is collusion' Is climate science maturing, or should we reach for our tinfoil hats?	Coby Beck	16 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: More and more, climate models share all the same assumptions -- so of course they all agree! And every year, fewer scientists dare speak out against the findings of the IPCC, thanks to the pressure to conform. Answer: The growing confluence of model results and the increasingly similar physical representations of the climate system from model to model may well look like sharing code or tweaking ' ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

Is today's warming man-made? Here's why the scientific community thinks so	Andrew Dessler	15 Nov 2006	Gristmill
This is a 'greatest hit' from my previous blog. It's a topic that comes up all the time, so I think it's worth a reprise. ----- As George Bush said at a recent press conference: 'the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural?' Why does the scientific community think humans are significantly contributing to today's warming? To understand why, first recognize that whenever the climate shifts, there's a reason for it. It does not wande ...
Topics: climate, climate change adaptation, climate change skepticism, climate science (all these topics)

'Position statements hide debate' True enough, but that is not the whole picture	Coby Beck	15 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: All those institutional position statements are fine, but by their very nature they paper over debate and obscure the variety of individual positions. The real debate is in the scientific journals. Answer: This is a fair point. Group position statements are designed to present a united front. The best indicator of what individual scientists think is in the current scientific literature, where n ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'There is no consensus' If this is not consensus, what would consensus look like?	Coby Beck	14 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Climate is complicated and there are lots of competing theories and unsolved mysteries. Until this is all worked out, one can't claim there is consensus on global warming theory. Until there is, we should not take any action. This is similar to the "global warming is a hoax" article, but at least here we can narrow down just what the consensus is about. Answer: Sure there are plenty o ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Global warming is a hoax' I wish James Inhofe were just a hoax ...	Coby Beck	13 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by environmental extremists and liberals who want an excuse for more big government (and/or world government via the U.N.). This is a common line, regardless of how ridiculous it is, so it should not go unanswered. Answer: Here is a list of organizations that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported: NASA's Goddard Ins ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Some sites show cooling' But you can't draw global conclusions from individual sites.	Coby Beck	12 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Some stations, in the U.S. for example, show cooling trends. If there were really global warming, it would be warming everywhere. Answer: Global warming is the long-term increase in globally and seasonally averaged surface temperatures. It is not the case, nor is it expected, that all regions on the planet, let alone all weather stations, will show the same changes in temperature or rainfall patte ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Observations show climate sensitivity is not very high' Actually, thermal inertia of the oceans means the jury is still out on that one	Coby Beck	11 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Taking into account the logarithmic effect of CO2 on temperature, the 35 percent increase we have already seen in CO2 concentrations represents about three-quarters of the total forcing to be expected from a CO2 doubling. Since we have warmed about 0.7 degrees Celsius so far, we should only expect about 0.3 degrees more for a doubling from pre-industrial levels, so about 1 degree total, not 3 degrees ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Sea level in the Arctic is falling' Sea level is a surprisingly complicated thing	Coby Beck	10 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: According to the latest state-of-the-art satellite measurements from over the Arctic, sea levels are falling! Guess all that ice isn't melting after all. Answer: Yes, a new study using Europe's Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite has determined that over the last 10 years, sea level in the Arctic Ocean has been falling at an average rate of about 2 mm/year. This is very new and very interesting news, t ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'Antarctic sea ice is increasing' Yes, but ...	Coby Beck	09 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Sure, sea ice is shrinking in the Arctic, but it is growing in the Antarctic. Sounds like natural fluctuations that balance out in the end. Answer: Overall, it is true that sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing. Around the peninsula, where there is a lot of warming [PDF], the ice is retreating. This is the area of the recent and dramatic Larsen B and Ross ice shelf breakups. But the rest of ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

'But the glaciers are not melting' Except ... they are!	Coby Beck	08 Nov 2006	Gristmill
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide) Objection: Sure, some glaciers are melting. But if you look at the studies, most of those for which we have data are growing. Answer: This is simply not true, rumors on "the internets" aside. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre and their State of the Cryosphere division, on their Glacial Balance page, report an overall accelerating rate of glacial mass loss. The World Glacier Monitoring Servi ...
Topics: climate, climate change skepticism, climate science, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (all these topics)

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