The Environment Thread

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

On 6/22/2016 at 4:36 PM, kelownabomberfan said:

Oh man did I laugh at this one.  What a cop-out.  The Chavez socialists are brutally corrupt and they have managed to systemically destroy the entire country.  Calling them a "boogieman" is a grave disservice to a brutal and stupid regime.  Ridiculous.

Actually- the easy cop-out is blaming everything on socialism... Venezuela's problems run more nuanced than the "Socialist boogieman".

[pigseye]

Climate change for dummies, whether your for or against this is the best12 minutes out there.

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

11 hours ago, pigseye said:

Climate change for dummies, whether your for or against this is the best12 minutes out there.

 

That's all you need for that video. thanks for wasting 12mins of my life.

 

Every point brought up in that video was covered in:

Global Warming & Climate Change Arguments

Here is a summary of global warming and climate change arguments, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.

	Climate Argument	vs	What the Science Says
1	"Climate's changed before"		Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.
2	"It's the sun"		In the last 35 years of global warming, sun andclimate have been going in opposite directions
3	"It's not bad"		Negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health & environment far outweigh any positives.
4	"There is no consensus"		97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
5	"It's cooling"		The last decade 2000-2009 was the hottest on record.
6	"Models are unreliable"		Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
7	"Temp record is unreliable"		The warming trend is the same in rural and urban areas, measured by thermometers and satellites.
8	"Animals and plants can adapt"		Global warming will cause mass extinctions of species that cannot adapt on short time scales.
9	"It hasn't warmed since 1998"		Every part of the Earth's climate system has continued warming since 1998, with 2015 shattering temperature records.
10	"Antarctica is gaining ice"		Satellites measure Antarctica losing land ice at an accelerating rate.
11	"Ice age predicted in the 70s"		The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
12	"CO2 lags temperature"		CO2 didn't initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming.
13	"Climate sensitivity is low"		Net positive feedback is confirmed by many different lines of evidence.
14	"We're heading into an ice age"		Worry about global warming impacts in the next 100 years, not an ice age in over 10,000 years.
15	"Ocean acidificationisn't serious"		Ocean acidification threatens entire marine food chains.
16	"Hockey stick is broken"		Recent studies agree that recent global temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
17	"Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy"		A number of investigations have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing in the media-hyped email incident.
18	"Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming"		There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.
19	"Al Gore got it wrong"		Al Gore's book is quite accurate, and far more accurate than contrarian books.
20	"Glaciers are growing"		Most glaciers are retreating, posing a serious problem for millions who rely on glaciers for water.
21	"It's cosmic rays"		Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.
22	"1934 - hottest year on record"		1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally.
23	"It's freaking cold!"		A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-termtrend of increasing global temperatures.
24	"Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming"		Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming.
25	"Sea level rise is exaggerated"		A variety of different measurements find steadily rising sea levels over the past century.
26	"It's Urban Heat Island effect"		Urban and rural regions show the same warmingtrend.
27	"Medieval Warm Period was warmer"		Globally averaged temperature now is higher than global temperature in medieval times.
28	"Mars is warming"		Mars is not warming globally.
29	"Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle"		Thick arctic sea ice is undergoing a rapid retreat.
30	"Increasing CO2 has little to no effect"		The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements.
31	"Oceans are cooling"		The most recent ocean measurements show consistent warming.
32	"It's a 1500 year cycle"		Ancient natural cycles are irrelevant for attributing recent global warming to humans.
33	"Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2emissions"		The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any.
34	"IPCC is alarmist"		Numerous papers have documented how IPCC predictions are more likely to underestimate theclimate response.
35	"Water vapor is the most powerfulgreenhouse gas"		Rising CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which makes global warming much worse.
36	"Polar bear numbers are increasing"		Polar bears are in danger of extinction as well as many other species.
37	"CO2 limits will harm the economy"		The benefits of a price on carbon outweigh the costs several times over.
38	"It's not happening"		There are many lines of evidence indicating global warming is unequivocal.
39	"Greenland was green"		Other parts of the earth got colder when Greenland got warmer.
40	"Greenland is gaining ice"		Greenland on the whole is losing ice, as confirmed by satellite measurement.
41	"CO2 is not a pollutant"		Through its impacts on the climate, CO2 presents a danger to public health and welfare, and thus qualifies as an air pollutant
42	"CO2 is plant food"		The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors
43	"Other planets are warming"		Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly.
44	"Arctic sea ice has recovered"		Thick arctic sea ice is in rapid retreat.
45	"There's no empirical evidence"		There are multiple lines of direct observations that humans are causing global warming.
46	"There's no correlation betweenCO2 and temperature"		There is long-term correlation between CO2 and global temperature; other effects are short-term.
47	"We're coming out of the Little Ice Age"		Scientists have determined that the factors which caused the Little Ice Age cooling are not currently causing global warming
48	"It cooled mid-century"		Mid-century cooling involved aerosols and is irrelevant for recent global warming.
49	"Global warming stopped in 1998,1995, 2002, 2007,2010, ????"		Global temperature is still rising and 2010 was the hottest recorded.
50	"CO2 was higher in the past"		When CO2 was higher in the past, the sun was cooler.
51	"It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low"		Early 20th century warming is due to several causes, including rising CO2.
52	"Satellites show no warming in thetroposphere"		The most recent satellite data show that the earth as a whole is warming.
53	"It's aerosols"		Aerosols have been masking global warming, which would be worse otherwise.
54	"2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells"		A cold day in Chicago in winter has nothing to do with the trend of global warming.
55	"It's El Niño"		El Nino has no trend and so is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
56	"Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use"		Most glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, notwithstanding a few complicated cases.
57	"It's not us"		Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.
58	"It's a natural cycle"		No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenicgreenhouse gases.
59	"There's no tropospheric hot spot"		We see a clear "short-term hot spot" - there's various evidence for a "long-term hot spot".
60	"It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation"		The PDO shows no trend, and therefore the PDO is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
61	"Scientists can't even predict weather"		Weather and climate are different; climate predictions do not need weather detail.
62	"IPCC were wrong about Himalayanglaciers"		Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report.
63	"Greenhouse effecthas been falsified"		The greenhouse effect is standard physics and confirmed by observations.
64	"2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory"		The 2nd law of thermodynamics is consistent with the greenhouse effect which is directly observed.
65	"CO2 limits will hurt the poor"		Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change.
66	"Clouds provide negative feedback"		Evidence is building that net cloud feedback is likely positive and unlikely to be strongly negative.
67	"The science isn't settled"		That human CO2 is causing global warming is known with high certainty & confirmed by observations.
68	"Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated"		Sea level rise is now increasing faster than predicted due to unexpectedly rapid ice melting.
69	"It's the ocean"		The oceans are warming and moreover are becoming more acidic, threatening the food chain.
70	"IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests"		The IPCC statement on Amazon rainforests was correct, and was incorrectly reported in some media.
71	"Corals are resilient to bleaching"		Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year.
72	"CO2 effect is saturated"		Direct measurements find that rising CO2 is trapping more heat.
73	"Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans"		Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.
74	"Greenland ice sheet won't collapse"		When Greenland was 3 to 5 degrees C warmer than today, a large portion of the Ice Sheet melted.
75	"CO2 is just a trace gas"		Many substances are dangerous even in trace amounts; what really matters is the total amount ofCO2 in the atmosphere.
76	"It's methane"		Methane plays a minor role in global warming but could get much worse if permafrost starts to melt.
77	"500 scientists refute the consensus"		Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
78	"CO2 has a short residence time"		Excess CO2 from human emissions has a long residence time of over 100 years
79	"CO2measurements are suspect"		CO2 levels are measured by hundreds of stations across the globe, all reporting the same trend.
80	"Humidity is falling"		Multiple lines of independent evidence indicate humidity is rising and provides positive feedback.
81	"Neptune is warming"		And the sun is cooling.
82	"Springs aren't advancing"		Hundreds of flowers across the UK are flowering earlier now than any time in 250 years.
83	"Jupiter is warming"		Jupiter is not warming, and anyway the sun is cooling.
84	"It's land use"		Land use plays a minor role in climate change, although carbon sequestration may help to mitigate.
85	"Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature"		The 'decline' refers to a decline in northern tree-rings, not global temperature, and is openly discussed in papers and the IPCC reports.
86	"CO2 is not increasing"		CO2 is increasing rapidly, and is reaching levels not seen on the earth for millions of years.
87	"Record snowfall disproves global warming"		Warming leads to increased evaporation and precipitation, which falls as increased snow in winter.
88	"They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'"		'Global warming' and 'climate change' mean different things and have both been used for decades.
89	"Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun"		The sun has not warmed since 1970 and so cannot be driving global warming.
90	"CO2 is coming from the ocean"		The ocean is absorbing massive amounts of CO2, and is becoming more acidic as a result.
91	"IPCC overestimate temperature rise"		Monckton used the IPCC equation in an inappropriate manner.
92	"Pluto is warming"		And the sun has been recently cooling.
93	"CO2 is not the only driver of climate"		Theory, models and direct measurement confirmCO2 is currently the main driver of climate change.
94	"Peer review process was corrupted"		An Independent Review concluded that CRU's actions were normal and didn't threaten the integrity of peer review.
95	"Arctic was warmer in 1940"		The actual data show high northern latitudes are warmer today than in 1940.
96	"Renewable energy is too expensive"		When you account for all of the costs associated with burning coal and other fossil fuels, like air pollution and health effects, in reality they are significantly more expensive than most renewable energysources.
97	"Southern sea ice is increasing"		Antarctic sea ice has grown in recent decades despite the Southern Ocean warming at the same time.
98	"Sea level rise is decelerating"		Global sea level data shows that sea level rise has been increasing since 1880 while future sea level rise predictions are based on physics, not statistics.
99	"CO2 limits will make little difference"		If every nation agrees to limit CO2 emissions, we can achieve significant cuts on a global scale.
100	"It's microsite influences"		Microsite influences on temperature changes are minimal; good and bad sites show the same trend.
101	"Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity"		Lindzen and Choi’s paper is viewed as unacceptably flawed by other climate scientists.
102	"Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995"		Phil Jones was misquoted.
103	"Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate"		Humans are small but powerful, and human CO2emissions are causing global warming.
104	"Infrared Iris will reduce global warming"		The iris hypothesis has not withstood the test of time - subsequent research has found that if it exists, the effect is much smaller than originally hypothesized, and may even slightly amplify rather than reducing global warming.
105	"Dropped stations introduce warming bias"		If the dropped stations had been kept, the temperature would actually be slightly higher.
106	"It's too hard"		Scientific studies have determined that current technology is sufficient to reduce greenhouse gasemissions enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
107	"It's not urgent"		A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points.
108	"It's albedo"		Albedo change in the Arctic, due to receding ice, is increasing global warming.
109	"Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960"		This is a detail that is complex, local, and irrelevant to the observed global warming trend.
110	"It's soot"		Soot stays in the atmosphere for days to weeks;carbon dioxide causes warming for centuries.
111	"Roy Spencer finds negative feedback"		Spencer's model is too simple, excluding important factors like ocean dynamics and treats cloud feedbacks as forcings.
112	"Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong"		Jim Hansen had several possible scenarios; his mid-level scenario B was right.
113	"It's global brightening"		This is a complex aerosol effect with unclear temperature significance.
114	"Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected"		This argument ignores the cooling effect of aerosolsand the planet's thermal inertia.
115	"Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea icegain"		Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain.
116	"It's a climate regimeshift"		There is no evidence that climate has chaotic “regimes” on a long-term basis.
117	"Solar cycles cause global warming"		Over recent decades, the sun has been slightly cooling & is irrelevant to recent global warming.
118	"Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming"		Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
119	"Plant stomata show higher and more variable CO2 levels"		Stomatal data is not as direct as ice coremeasurements and hence not as precise.
120	"Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project"		The 'OISM petition' was signed by only a few climatologists.
121	"Ice isn't melting"		Arctic sea ice has shrunk by an area equal to Western Australia, and summer or multi-year sea icemight be all gone within a decade.
122	"A drop in volcanic activity caused warming"		Volcanoes have had no warming effect in recent global warming - if anything, a cooling effect.
123	"IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period"		The IPCC simply updated their temperature history graphs to show the best data available at the time.
124	"Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted"		Weather is chaotic but climate is driven by Earth's energy imbalance, which is more predictable.
125	"Sea level is not rising"		The claim sea level isn’t rising is based on blatantly doctored graphs contradicted by observations.
126	"It's ozone"		Ozone has only a small effect.
127	"Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored"		An independent inquiry found CRU is a small research unit with limited resources and their rigour and honesty are not in doubt.
128	"Climate 'Skeptics' are like Galileo"		Modern scientists, not anti-science skeptics, follow in Galileo’s footsteps.
129	"The IPCC consensus is phoney"		113 nations signed onto the 2007 IPCC report, which is simply a summary of the current body of climatescience evidence
130	"Tuvalu sea level isn't rising"		Tuvalu sea level is rising 3 times larger than the global average.
131	"Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed"		Benny Peiser, the Oreskes critic, retracted his criticism.
132	"Renewables can't provide baseload power"		A number of renewable sources already do provide baseload power, and we don't need renewables to provide a large percentage of baseload power immediately.
133	"Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming"		Trenberth is talking about the details of energy flow, not whether global warming is happening.
134	"Ice Sheet losses are overestimated"		A number of independent measurements find extensive ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland.
135	"CRU tampered with temperature data"		An independent inquiry went back to primary datasources and were able to replicate CRU's results.
136	"Melting ice isn't warming the Arctic"		Melting ice leads to more sunlight being absorbed by water, thus heating the Arctic.
137	"Breathing contributes to CO2buildup"		By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with.
138	"Satellite error inflated Great Lakes temperatures"		Temperature errors in the Great Lakes region are not used in any global temperature records.
139	"Soares finds lack of correlation betweenCO2 and temperature"		Soares looks at short-term trends which are swamped by natural variations while ignoring the long-term correlation.
140	"We're heading into cooling"		There is no scientific basis for claims that the planet will begin to cool in the near future.
141	"Murry Salby findsCO2 rise is natural"		Multiple lines of evidence make it very clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions.
142	"Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer"		This argument uses regional temperature data that ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began.
143	"CO2 emissions do not correlate withCO2 concentration"		That humans are causing the rise in atmosphericCO2 is confirmed by multiple isotopic analyses.
144	"The sun is getting hotter"		The sun has just had the deepest solar minimum in 100 years.
145	"It's waste heat"		Greenhouse warming is adding 100 times more heatto the climate than waste heat.
146	"Water vapor in thestratospherestopped global warming"		This possibility just means that future global warming could be even worse.
147	"It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940"		The warming trend over 1970 to 2001 is greater than warming from both 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940.
148	"An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature"		CO2 levels are rising so fast that unless we decrease emissions, global warming will accelerate this century.
149	"Record high snow cover was set in winter 2008/2009"		Winter snow cover in 2008/2009 was average while the long-term trend in spring, summer, and annual snow cover is rapid decline.
150	"Mauna Loa is a volcano"		The global trend is calculated from hundreds of CO2measuring stations and confirmed by satellites.
151	"CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming"		The CERN CLOUD experiment only tested one-third of one out of four requirements necessary to blame global warming on cosmic rays, and two of the other requirements have already failed.
152	"Venus doesn't have a runawaygreenhouse effect"		Venus very likely underwent a runaway or ‘moist’ greenhouse phase earlier in its history, and today is kept hot by a dense CO2 atmosphere.
153	"Deniers are part of the 97%"		If anyone claims to be part of the 97 percent, it means they disagree with the contrarian argument that humans are having a minimal impact on global warming.
154	"Water levels correlate withsunspots"		This detail is irrelevant to the observation of global warming caused by humans.
155	"It's planetary movements"		Blaming global warming on the movements of other planets is little more than 'climastrology' and curve fitting without a physical basis.
156	"Antarctica is too cold to lose ice"		Glaciers are sliding faster into the ocean because ice shelves are thinning due to warming oceans.
157	"Positive feedbackmeans runaway warming"		Positive feedback won't lead to runaway warming; diminishing returns on feedback cycles limit the amplification.
158	"Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?"		Official records, Editors and emails suggest CRU scientists acted in the spirit if not the letter of IPCC rules.
159	"CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician"		The sun was much cooler during the Ordovician.
160	"Coral atolls grow as sea levels rise"		Thousands of coral atolls have "drowned" when unable to grow fast enough to survive at sea level.
161	"It's internal variability"		Internal variability can only account for small amounts of warming and cooling over periods of decades, and scientific studies have consistently shown that it cannot account for the global warming over the past century.
162	"CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused"		Many lines of evidence, including simple accounting, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to human fossil fuel burning.
163	"It's CFCs"		CFCs contribute at a small level.
164	"Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising"		The Siddall 2009 paper was retracted because its predicted sea level rise was too low.
165	"Warming causesCO2 rise"		Recent warming is due to rising CO2.
166	"Renewable energy investment kills jobs"		Investment in renewable energy creates more jobs than investment in fossil fuel energy.
167	"Schmittner finds lowclimate sensitivity"		The Schmittner et al. study finds low probability of both very low and very high climate sensitivities, and its lower estimate (as compared to the IPCC) is based on a new temperature reconstruction of theLast Glacial Maximum that may or may not withstand the test of time.
168	"No warming in 16 years"		Global surface temperatures have continued to rise steadily beneath short-term natural cooling effects, and the rise in global heat content has not slowed at all.
169	"Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass"		Greenland's ice loss is accelerating & will add metres of sea level rise in upcoming centuries.
170	"DMI show cooling Arctic"		While summer maximums have showed little trend, the annual average Arctic temperature has risen sharply in recent decades.
171	"Ben Santer and the 1995 IPCC report"
172	"CO2 limits won't cool the planet"		CO2 limits won't cool the planet, but they can make the difference between continued accelerating global warming to catastrophic levels vs. slowing and eventually stopping the warming at hopefully safe levels
173	"It's a climate shift step function caused by natural cycles"		Natural cycles superimposed on a linear warmingtrend can be mistaken for step changes, but the underlying warming is caused by the externalradiative forcing.
174	"Royal Society embraces skepticism"		The Royal Society still strongly state that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming.
175	"It's only a few degrees"		A few degrees of global warming has a huge impact on ice sheets, sea levels and other aspects ofclimate.
176	"97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven"		The 97% consensus has been independently confirmed by a number of different approaches and lines of evidence.
177	"It's satellite microwave transmissions"		Satellite transmissions are extremely small and irrelevant.
178	"CO2 only causes 35% of global warming"		CO2 and corresponding water vapor feedback are the biggest cause of global warming.
179	"IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading"		All of the statements made in the IPCC report regarding the figure in question are correct and supported.
180	"Sea level fell in 2010"		The temporary drop in sea level in 2010 was due to intense land flooding caused by a strong La Nina.
181	"Arctic sea ice extent was lower in the past"		Current Arctic sea ice extent is the lowest in the past several thousand years.
182	"A grand solar minimum could trigger another ice age"		Peer-reviewed research, physics, and math all tell us that a grand solar minimum would have no more than a 0.3°C cooling effect, barely enough to put a dent in human-caused global warming.
183	"UAH atmospheric temperatures proveclimate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong"		The most likely explanation for UAH data warming less than expected is that the UAH data set is biased low.
184	"We didn't have global warming during the Industrial Revolution"		CO2 emissions were much smaller 100 years ago.
185	"Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick"		Ljungqvist's temperature reconstruction is very similar to other reconstructions by Moberg and Mann.
186	"Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater"		Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled.
187	"Removing all CO2would make little difference"		Removing CO2 would cause most water in the air to rain out and cancel most of the greenhouse effect.
188	"Loehle and Scafetta find a 60 year cycle causing global warming"		Loehle and Scafetta's paper is nothing more than a curve fitting exercise with no physical basis using an overly simplistic model.
189	"Postma disproved the greenhouse effect"		Postma's model contains many simple errors; in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect.
190	"Underground temperatures controlclimate"		The amount of heat energy coming out of the Earth is too small to even be worth considering.
191	"Humans survived past climate changes"		Humans have been through climate changes before- but mostly cold ones and mostly in our far distant past.
192	"Heatwaves have happened before"		Global warming is increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves.
193	"Adapting to global warming is cheaper than preventing it"		Preventing global warming is relatively cheap; business-as-usual will cause accelerating climatedamage costs that economists struggle to even estimate.

 

 

[pigseye]

More idiocy at it's finest.

http://www.cfact.org/2016/06/30/enviros-freak-out-over-six-flags-chopping-down-66-acres-of-trees-for-solar/

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2465/2016-climate-trends-continue-to-break-records/

 

2016 climate trends continue to break records

By Patrick Lynch,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Chunks of sea ice, melt ponds and open water are all seen in this image captured at an altitude of 1,500 feet by the NASA's Digital Mapping System instrument during an Operation IceBridge flight over the Chukchi Sea on Saturday, July 16, 2016. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Operation IceBridge.

Two key climate change indicators — global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent — have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880. Meanwhile, five of the first six months set records for the smallest monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979. This video is public domain and can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio.

Five of the first six months of 2016 also set records for the smallest respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979, according to analyses developed by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. The one exception, March, recorded the second smallest extent for that month.

While these two key climate indicators have broken records in 2016, NASA scientists said it is more significant that global temperature and Arctic sea ice are continuing their decades-long trends of change. Both trends are ultimately driven by rising concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40 percent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Arctic sea ice extent in September, the seasonal low point in the annual cycle, has been declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade.

"While the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific this winter gave a boost to global temperatures from October onwards, it is the underlying trend which is producing these record numbers," GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said.

Previous El Niño events have driven temperatures to what were then record levels, such as in 1998. But in 2016, even as the effects of the recent El Niño taper off, global temperatures have risen well beyond those of 18 years ago because of the overall warming that has taken place in that time.

 

The first six months of 2016 were the warmest six-month period in NASA's modern temperature record, which dates to 1880. Credit: NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The global trend in rising temperatures is outpaced by the regional warming in the Arctic, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA Goddard.

 

"It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme," Meier said. "This warmth as well as unusual weather patterns have led to the record low sea ice extents so far this year."

NASA tracks temperature and sea ice as part of its effort to understand the Earth as a system and to understand how Earth is changing. In addition to maintaining 19 Earth-observing space missions, NASA also sends researchers around the globe to investigate different facets of the planet at closer range. Right now, NASA researchers are working across the Arctic to better understand both the processes driving increased sea ice melt and the impacts of rising temperatures on Arctic ecosystems.

NASA's long-running Operation IceBridge campaign last week began a series of airborne measurements of melt ponds on the surface of the Arctic sea ice cap. Melt ponds are shallow pools of water that form as ice melts. Their darker surface can absorb more sunlight and accelerate the melting process. IceBridge is flying out of Barrow, Alaska, during sea ice melt season to capture melt pond observations at a scale never before achieved. Recent studies have found that the formation of melt ponds early in the summer is a good predictor of the yearly minimum sea ice extent in September.

"No one has ever, from a remote sensing standpoint, mapped the large-scale depth of melt ponds on sea ice," said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge’s project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA Goddard. "The information we’ll collect is going to show how much water is retained in melt ponds and what kind of topography is needed on the sea ice to constrain them, which will help improve melt pond models."

Operation IceBridge is a NASA airborne mission that has been flying multiple campaigns at both poles each year since 2009, with a goal of maintaining critical continuity of observations of sea ice and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

At the same time, NASA researchers began in earnest this year a nearly decade-long, multi-faceted field study of Arctic ecosystems in Alaska and Canada. The Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) will study how forests, permafrost and other ecosystems are responding to rising temperatures in the Arctic, where climate change is unfolding faster than anywhere else on the planet.

ABoVE consists of dozens individual experiments that over years will study the region's changing forests, the cycle of carbon movement between the atmosphere and land, thawing permafrost, the relationship between fire and climate change, and more.

For more information on NASA's Earth science activities, Visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earth

For more information about NASA's IceBridge, visit:

www.nasa.gov/icebridge

For more information about the ABoVE mission, visit:

http://above.nasa.gov/
 

Edited July 25, 2016 by wanna-b-fanboy
Because it's cyclical... right?

[Mark F]

did you see this? 

 

also

"It was a historic day in the annals of meteorology on Thursday, July 21, 2016 in the Middle East, where the temperature in Mitribah, Kuwait soared to an astonishing 54°C (129.2°F). If verified, this would be Earth's hottest temperature ever reliably measured outside of Death Valley, California, according to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt."

Edited July 26, 2016 by Mark F

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

did you see this? 

 

also

"It was a historic day in the annals of meteorology on Thursday, July 21, 2016 in the Middle East, where the temperature in Mitribah, Kuwait soared to an astonishing 54°C (129.2°F). If verified, this would be Earth's hottest temperature ever reliably measured outside of Death Valley, California, according to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt."

I did not! holy ****... thanks for sharing that. 

So that is a methane bubble? Will need to google some stuff! thanks!

 

Did some reading and came across this:

http://www.wired.com/2016/07/theres-good-explanation-bouncy-patch-grass-siberia/

Edited July 26, 2016 by wanna-b-fanboy

[Mark F]

can't read that, cause I cant disable adblocker, but thanks.  No doubt if frozen methane starts melting, .......

here's something that's  going to cause water problems  in Western Canada

 

Saskatchewan glacier .... good photos of the retreat https://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/saskatchewan-glacier-retreat-alberta/

" The recession of the glacier since the late 19th century is similar to that of other glaciers in the area and was greater than 2 km. middle image from USGS. Bolch et al (2010) identified a 25% loss in glacier area in Alberta from 1985 to 2005, indicating the retreat goes on regionally. "

 

Athabasca Glacier

" Markers dating back as early as 1890 show the toe of the Athabasca Glacier has retreated 1.5 kilometres, leaving a moonscape of gravel and rock behind.

"We're doing our measurement close to the toe of the glacier and the amount of growth each year is dwarfed by the amount it recedes," said Wilmshurst.

Bob Sandford, chairman of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade, said it's "mind boggling" because not only is the glacier receding — it's also becoming more shallow.

"I first wrote a tourist book on the Columbia Icefields in 1994 and it was generally held that it was somewhere around 325 square kilometres. That icefield now is calculated to be about 220 square kilometres," he said."

 

And here's the future problem:

 

"Water from the Saskatchewan Glacier enters into the Saskatchewan River. From here it moves eastward crossing the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba into Hudson Bay, and thereby, the Atlantic Ocean. These meltwaters travel a distance of 1,600 miles (2,600 km). From glaciers on the ice field’s northwestern edge, water flows into the Fraser and Columbia rivers leading to the Pacific Ocean. The Columbia River flows 1,240 miles (2,000 km) before outletting its fresh water into the ocean. If these glaciers disappear, a critical water supply, mainly for western Canada but also for other portions of North America, will be gone. To illustrate the problem, the Athabasca Glacier feeds several large prairie water systems. During the hot, dry summer of 1998, this glacier was the only thing that kept certain rivers flowing."

 

ugly times ahead in Western Canada

 

 

Edited July 26, 2016 by Mark F

[Mark F]

methane russian researchers

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats-6276278.html

[Mark F]

temperature 1880 to 2015

 

 

[Fatty Liver]

On 7/26/2016 at 10:19 AM, Mark F said:

can't read that, cause I cant disable adblocker, but thanks.  No doubt if frozen methane starts melting, .......

here's something that's  going to cause water problems  in Western Canada

 

Saskatchewan glacier .... good photos of the retreat https://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/saskatchewan-glacier-retreat-alberta/

" The recession of the glacier since the late 19th century is similar to that of other glaciers in the area and was greater than 2 km. middle image from USGS. Bolch et al (2010) identified a 25% loss in glacier area in Alberta from 1985 to 2005, indicating the retreat goes on regionally. "

 

Athabasca Glacier

" Markers dating back as early as 1890 show the toe of the Athabasca Glacier has retreated 1.5 kilometres, leaving a moonscape of gravel and rock behind.

"We're doing our measurement close to the toe of the glacier and the amount of growth each year is dwarfed by the amount it recedes," said Wilmshurst.

Bob Sandford, chairman of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade, said it's "mind boggling" because not only is the glacier receding — it's also becoming more shallow.

"I first wrote a tourist book on the Columbia Icefields in 1994 and it was generally held that it was somewhere around 325 square kilometres. That icefield now is calculated to be about 220 square kilometres," he said."

 

And here's the future problem:

 

"Water from the Saskatchewan Glacier enters into the Saskatchewan River. From here it moves eastward crossing the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba into Hudson Bay, and thereby, the Atlantic Ocean. These meltwaters travel a distance of 1,600 miles (2,600 km). From glaciers on the ice field’s northwestern edge, water flows into the Fraser and Columbia rivers leading to the Pacific Ocean. The Columbia River flows 1,240 miles (2,000 km) before outletting its fresh water into the ocean. If these glaciers disappear, a critical water supply, mainly for western Canada but also for other portions of North America, will be gone. To illustrate the problem, the Athabasca Glacier feeds several large prairie water systems. During the hot, dry summer of 1998, this glacier was the only thing that kept certain rivers flowing."

 

ugly times ahead in Western Canada

 

 

Related, went through Rogers Pass a couple of weeks ago on the way back to MB and jaw dropping how much has changed in the last six years.  All of the glaciers that can be seen from the highway are quickly receding and some have disappeared completely.  I know this area quite well as in the last 10 years I've climbed most of the mountain trails in the area.  It's really too late to do anything now, so they best start planning to do without the water these glaciers provide.

[Mark F]

8 hours ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

jaw dropping how much has changed in the last six years.

When I first noticed it, (I have driven many times through B.C.) was the death of the pine forests...... huge area bigger than Vancouver island has died in B.C. you could see it progressing, whole mountain sides, gone brown....with each passing year. It's beyond me how anyone can drive through those yellow dead forests, and not wonder why it was happening.

 

another eye opener for me was driving through the agricultural areas around Vanouver, and seeing crops under irrigation. I lived there years ago..... there was no shortage of rain in the fifties.

you must be pretty fit to climb those trails, they're not easy.

 

Edited August 22, 2016 by Mark F

[pigseye]

 

[pigseye]

 

[pigseye]

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism” 
– Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First

“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,
reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King

[pigseye]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=037_1383685946

 

Quote

Is there a new scientific consensus forming around global cooling? That’s what environmentalist Lawrence Solomon writes in the Financial Post, citing the fact that solar activity is decreasing at the fastest rate as anytime in the last 10,000 years.

“Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and 1970s,” Solomon writes. “The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say. Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.”

Google AMO (Atlantic Multi-Decal Oscillation) and you will see why this theory is becoming the new battle cry, AGW is dead because the research grants have all dried up. 

[pigseye]

 

[pigseye]

 

[pigseye]

 

[Mark F]

 

checked up on that last link, (mini ice age)  here's some other valueable stuff at that channel... thanks a lot ! I'm sure you're other links have similar degree of credibility. (apparently the lotus flower is the best protection from "all danger")

 

"ALL PLANETS HOLLOW!! AURORAS COME FROM POLAR OPENINGS!! 2016

198 views

5 months ago"

 

"LAZERS COULD 'CLOAK THE EARTH FROM ALIENS'!

• 21 views
• 4 months ago"

Edited August 27, 2016 by Mark F

[pigseye]

5 minutes ago, Mark F said:

 

checked up on that last link, (mini ice age)  here's some other valueable stuff at that channel... thanks a lot ! I'm sure you're other links have similar degree of credibility. (apparently the lotus flower is the best protection from "all danger")

 

"ALL PLANETS HOLLOW!! AURORAS COME FROM POLAR OPENINGS!! 2016

198 views

5 months ago"

 

"LAZERS COULD 'CLOAK THE EARTH FROM ALIENS'!

• 21 views
• 4 months ago"

Typical lefty reply, stereotype and dismiss all dissenting opinions but your own. How about commenting on the science behind the theory since your such an expert or didn't they teach you that at community college? 

[Mark F]

how bout responding with something other than an insult?

hi, climate is science, not politics, and is neither left right nor center.

 

How bout explaining why someone who thinks the earth is hollow is worth five seconds of my time?

[pigseye]

2 hours ago, Mark F said:

how bout responding with something other than an insult?

hi, climate is science, not politics, and is neither left right nor center.

 

How bout explaining why someone who thinks the earth is hollow is worth five seconds of my time?

What did you expect from a Gordon Gecko fan? 

And your second statement is really what this all boils down to. Science may be pure but people aren't, which is really what both sides are guilty of in the whole climate debate. There are good and bad people on both sides, don't for minute think that all climate alarmists wear white hats and are only in it for the sake of humanity and that all skeptics are funded by energy and capital.

As for your last statement, keep an open mid, you'd be surprised how healthy a good laugh can be from time to time.  

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

On 27/08/2016 at 3:09 PM, pigseye said:

all skeptics are funded by energy and capital. 

But the thing is... they are.

Give me a list of prominent skeptics that you hold in high esteem. 

[Mark F]

first clip is interesting too.... news source.. The voice of Russia.