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Climate havoc crosses borders
Severe drought threatens New Mexico and neighboring Chihuahua, Mexico. To make matters worse, unseasonal storms hit both states last week and wreaked havoc on crops in Chihuahua.
For the second year in a row, residents of New Mexico and neighboring Chihuahua, Mexico, find themselves in the throes of severe drought. On May 15, N.M. Gov. Susana Martinez issued an emergency drought declaration, citing in part a forecast from the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center that warned of persistent or intensified drought in the state.
As an example of deepening water woes, Martinez noted the water shortage in the northern town of Las Vegas. Martinez’s office stated that 2011 was the second driest year ever recorded in New Mexico.
“In addition to the work we’re doing at the state level to assist communities facing serious drought conditions, I’m hopeful this declaration will assist them in securing any available federal funding as well,” Martinez said.
Martinez’s counterpart in Chihuahua, Gov. Cesar Duarte, also recently reached out to his own federal government for help in coping with drought. Last month, Duarte requested about $200 million from the Calderon administration for water infrastructure projects, emergency food aid and agricultural subsidies to help rural communities under environmental stress. According to Duarte, natural water supplies for 300 communities in the Sierra Tarahumara region have dried up and stopped giving the essential ingredient of life.
“According to the National Water Commission, Chihuahua is the state confronting the severest drought in the country…,” Duarte said.
Unseasonal storms
Under the circumstances, rain normally might be welcome relief in New Mexico and Chihuahua. But unseasonal storms accompanied by high winds lashed through the region last week and left minor flooding and some power outages, and a tree crashed into a house in Albuquerque. In Socorro County, N.M., a highly unusual tornado startled the small town of Magdalena.
“And we were so scared we had to run to the closet,” resident Monique Baca was quoted as saying; no significant damages were immediately reported from the twister.
Across the border in Chihuahua, the precipitation sowed a path of destruction through far-flung farming communities, where golf ball-sized hail was reported. At least $40 million in estimated losses were racked up for cotton, chile, wheat, corn and pecan farms.
The municipalities and communities most affected included Galeana, Ascension, Buenaventura, LeBaron, Flores Magon, and Villa Ahumada. The Pecan Producers Association estimated a 100 percent loss in some of the state’s orchards, and growers took measures to rehabilitate trees so production could resume within two years.
As reports were still trickling in from remote areas, the Chihuahua State Secretariat for Rural Development reported damages to more than 3,000 acres of jalapeno chile peppers, nearly 2,000 acres of oats and more than 2,000 acres of wheat. Approximately 23,400 acres planted in cotton were judged a complete loss. In total, 30,000 acres or more of cropland and orchards could have been impacted.
If drought and extreme weather aren’t enough, Chihuahua has also counted at least 723 forest fires since the beginning of the year.
Reconvening drought task force
In New Mexico, Martinez’s drought declaration reconvened the New Mexico Drought Task Force. Led by the state engineer, the task force’s mission is to make recommendations to the governor on “ways the state can prepare for and mitigate the problems that occur in New Mexico due to persistent drought conditions.” The task force was ordered to meet in open public meetings at least once each quarter.
The New Mexico drought declaration cautioned that it might take “several years of higher than normal precipitation and snow pack for current reservoir storage to recover,” as well as a “considerable amount of precipitation and snow melt run off” for the restoration of decent soil moisture and plant vegetation conditions.
Frontera NorteSur is a U.S.-Mexico border news service run by the Center for Latin American and Border Studies at New Mexico State University. Find it online here. Additional sources for this article: El Semanario de Nuevo Mexico. May 17, 2012. El Heraldo de Chihuahua, May 12 and 13, 2012. Articles by Emmanuel Hernandez and editorial staff. Kob.com, May 13, 2012. Krqe.com, May 11 and 12, 2012. Articles by Mark Ronchetti. La Jornada, April 14, 2012. Article by Miroslava Breach and Ruben Villalpando.
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Yes IP, and the IPCC is headed by an industrial engineer, not a “climate” scientist, so all their work is also discredited then? And I linked to that paper due to the data graph, which the paper’s author did not do, it is a common geoscience graph based on real scientific data and is also summarized here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
The data come from these peer-reviewed sources: “This figures shows estimates of the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations during the Phanerozoic. Three estimates are based on geochemical modeling: GEOCARB III (Berner and Kothavala 2001), COPSE (Bergmann et al. 2004) and Rothman (2001). These are compared to the carbon dioxide measurement database of Royer et al. (2004) and a 30 Myr filtered average of those data. Error envelopes are shown when they were available. The right hand scale shows the ratio of these measurements to the estimated average for the last several million years (the Quaternary). Customary labels for the periods of geologic time appear at the bottom.”
And you’re welcome Mr. Schneider, always glad to be of service. And Rach refers to the liberals media hero, Rachel Maddow, I love to watch her, what a character. But let me say I believe people deserve respect, and I respect you as a person, however ideas and opinions have no such rights, and as Forrest said, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
I see the light!!!
Mr. Schneider, if you wish to debate the science, please remove your partisan political glasses and see the light of real science data, not what MoveOn, DailyKos, Rach, and the DNC want to make you believe,
And please do not confuse realclimate, a partisan blog of AGW believers who deny a voice to anyone with opposing views (and I know), with real science.
Dr. J knows! And is happy to say so himself. I don’t know how I could have doubted his expertise. If he says that realclimate.org, which has named scientists with actual CVs and actual jobs at actual, like, universities – and has actual citations to the peer reviewed literature and to publicly available data sets – if he says that it’s a partisan blog which I should ignore – well, how could I question his claim? That would be disrespectful.
He cites an article published on a site that describes itself thusly:
This site of the Biology Cabinet Organization® hasn’t been devised with the intention of denigrating the genuine efforts of people to achieve a healthier world. We agree absolutely with the authentic actions that many people are taking to maintain our planet in optimum conditions, for the sake of all forms of life. Nevertheless, in addition to our educational work, we have the academic obligation and right to denounce the actions of groups and individuals who have usurped the name of science and are deceiving the public by distorting scientific knowledge.
http://www.biocab.org/#anchor_168
Now certainly some completely true studies have been published in obscure and perhaps questionable journals. I’m sure this is such an instance.
Furthermore, if The warm interval of the middle Pliocene continues to vex proxy data and climate modelers then certainly we don’t need to worry about global climate change. After all, this means that we haven’t achieved the “absolute scientific proof” of the AGW hypothesis” that Dr. J requires.
I know you are not a scientist Mr. Schneider, so I would not expect you to know these things, it took me many decades of education research, and experience to learn them all.
Clearly the problem is not the data or the hypothesis testing: the problem is ME. There’s a defect in ME. But now that I know I’ve been brainwashed by “ MoveOn, DailyKos, Rach, and the DNC” (what is Rach? Do I even want to know? Is this more of my lack of decades of studying these issues?) I can cast the mote from my eyes and see the light! It’s all about the character of the people, it’s not about the data. Dr. J is showing his respect for me by bringing my character flaws to my attention so I can improve myself, and for this I’m duly grately, and I thank him.
And now it’s time to step away from the internet for a while.
Look, I just have a chemistry degree. In the process of getting that degree, I had to learn the laws of thermodynamics. The first is the conservation law. Basically, matter and energy are interchangeable and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. However, energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another. The total energy of an isolated system remains the same. The planet is basically a closed system.
Ok.
Humanity is extracting large quantities over an extended period of matter and converting it to energy. Not all the matter is converted as there is always some degree of loss and inefficiency according to the second law of thermodynamics.
So, where does all that matter and energy go in a closed system when the rate of conversion is as rapid as it has been this last 100 years or more? It stays here with us on the planet, only it is transferred from it’s relatively stable states underground to the top soil, water and atmosphere.
The accumulated effect of dumping millions of tons of carbon and stuff into the closed system where us beings live HAS to have consequences. Climatologists and other scientists have been studying those consequences and have collected empirical data. The data points to climate change that will threaten the viability of life on this earth as we know it now. The entropic degradation of our little closed system will result in destabilization of our civilizations resulting in world wars, drought, famine, extreme weather and acidification of the oceans.
Now, the superstitious Christians think this suicide pact with The Almighty is hunky-dory. So, the right-wing plugs away at their contradictory logic of anthropomorphic climate change denial while hoping for and believing in Armageddon sooner rather than later at the same time.
The scientists are trying to warn us and tell us that extreme climate change and most of the disaster it will entail can be averted if we change our consumptive, metastatic bad habits in time.
I choose to side with the hopeful ability for humanity to adapt and evolve before it is too late.
Note: The paper that Dr. J references is, as usual, not written by a climatologist, but a biologist, Dr. Nasif Nahle, whose work on climate science has received a great deal of criticism for flawed methodology and – much like “Dr.” J’s idea of “science” – a remarkable scarcity of data. The good Doc is constantly accusing others of playing politics but seems remarkably incapable of making a single point that is not itself rampantly and ill-advisedly political. Doc, a real scientist would make their point based upon the data, not choose which data to present based upon what they already believe.
Mr. Schneider, once again you fail to understand the science. This paper:
http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html
should help you a bit. Look at the first graph of the CO2 and temperature scientific data of geologic history, you will notice several things. One is that CO2 has been much, much higher than current, and that the fluctuations of CO2 are not correlated to CO2 increases. There is also little evidence in the geologic record of high CO2 causing the earth to become a burned out cinder to the point today’s relatively low CO2 (or even twice that level) is ”a danger” to anything. So much for your hypothesis of a link.
And please do not confuse realclimate, a partisan blog of AGW believers who deny a voice to anyone with opposing views (and I know), with real science. And as far as previous episodes of earth’s history, consider the Pliocene paradox, where Chandler, et al, in a 2007 AGU paper said this: ”The warm interval of the middle Pliocene continues to vex proxy data and climate modelers with its unusual combination of much warmer than modern sea surface temperatures, reduced ice sheet mass and consequent sea level rise, together with atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts that are within the error bars of present day values.” So today is different? Indeed.
And Pagani, et al in the AGU journal, Paleocenography, had this to say about the Miocene: ”There is no evidence for either high pCO2 during the late early Miocene climatic optimum or a sharp pCO2 decrease associated with EAIS (East Antarctic Ice Sheet) growth. Paradoxically, pCO2 increased following EAIS growth and obtained preindustrial levels by ∼10 Ma.
Today is different? Indeed. And there are numerous examples of all these non-correlated CO2-Temperature events throughout earth’s history, let me know if you need more, I got a million of ‘em.
Mr. Schneider, if you wish to debate the science, please remove your partisan political glasses and see the light of real science data, not what MoveOn, DailyKos, Rach, and the DNC want to make you believe, you are smarter than that I think.
“…another climate scientist I respect.”
Has anyone else noticed that Dr. J rarely points us to a “climate scientist” he respects who is actually a climate scientist? Dr. Pielke is a meteorologist, not a climatologist, and contrary to popular belief, the complex short-term science of meteorology is actually very different than the equally-complex long-term science of climatology. Once again, Dr. J is suggesting that we ask a dermatologist to perform neurosurgery.
You’ve demonstrated that your recourse to uniformatarianism is a red herring, J.
That is where the law of uniformitarianism comes into play. You stated it correctly, but you don’t seem to know that all of the previous episodes (thousands of them) over the last few hundred million years are caused primarily by Milankovitch cycles, not CO2 ….
Diffferent causes, different effects, uniformatarianism not implicated. Milankovich cycles not implicated. If you were to point to thousands of previous examples where the CO2 got as high as it is now, yet no dreadful climate change resulted, you’d have reason to invoke uniformatarianism. However, this time it’s different. There’s really no doubt that CO2 is rising dramatically. So saying that in the past CO2 has not risen dramatically and therefore now, when CO2 IS rising dramatically, we’ll see the same thing we’ve seen in the past – - I fail to see the logic.
Yes, I was being sloppy and incorrect to say “reflect” when perhaps I should have been more precise and said ‘absorbed and re-radiated’, but I don’t see the difference as huge. It simply means that the warmth from the surface which is emitted as infra-red does not disappear off into space but ends up back on the earth. That’s how atmospheric CO2 increases surface temperatures.
If you want to call them Tyndall gases go right ahead – I’ll use the terms which most everyone else uses, so as not to unduly confuse people or obfuscate the subject. You know the famous maxim: eschew obfuscation!
And of course there are much more plentiful and powerful Tyndall gases than CO2, thus the huge uncertainty that CO2, and human alone, is the primary cause of climate change.
Red herring and strawman alert!:
A. Nobody is claiming that “human alone” is the primary cause of climate change. People are claiming that human activity is contributing to climate change, that climate change will be dreadful, and that to reduce climate change we should reduce the human activities that are contributing to climate change.
B. Uncertainty is not your friend. Yes, there’s uncertainty – but that means that it could be way worse than the IPCC most likely trend, as well as better. Uncertainty works both ways.
See the work done by me and others on the Vostok Ice Cores that show this precisely and the lag …
If I knew your name I might be able to follow that reference, but otherwise it’s just another unverifiable claim.
Instead, I’d like to refer to the work of some named scientists who have studied the question of the CO2 lag shown in the ice cores, and concluded that it doesn’t undermine the AGW theory. Instead they say “In summary, the ice core data in no way contradict our understanding of the relationship between CO2 and temperature”:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
Heath, people may always deserve respect. My point was that arguments (which are NOT people, and indeed, I’ve been trying to say that we have to distinguish between the arguments and the people who make them) deserve no respect at all. Arguments are just arguments. They may be strong or weak, logical or fallacious, but they have no inherent human dignity.
Oh, and BTW arti, if you are seriously interested in the Anderegg et al article, here is a good critique of it (and the Doran article) by another climate scientist I respect:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/comments-on-the-pnas-article-expert-credibility-in-climate-change-by-anderegg-et-al-2010/
And arti, that link you provided to source documents to this non-peer reviewed Anderegg et al article doesn’t work.
The so called “greenhouse gases”, a misnomer since the effect is nothing at all like a greenhouse, and some scientists I respect have called for changing the name to Tyndall gases, as that is what they are, see here:
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2010/11/the-tyndall-gas-effect-part-1/
And to be precise, as science must be and politics is not since it is opinion based devoid of data, these gases ABSORB infrared radiation and emit it back, they do not “reflect” it, a huge distinction should one want to actually understand the science behind these effects. And of course there are much more plentiful and powerful Tyndall gases than CO2, thus the huge uncertainty that CO2, and human alone, is the primary cause of climate change. That is where the law of uniformitarianism comes into play. You stated it correctly, but you don’t seem to know that all of the previous episodes (thousands of them) over the last few hundred million years are caused primarily by Milankovitch cycles, not CO2, which is but a minor bit player in the climate change drama that comes along for the ride. See the work done by me and others on the Vostok Ice Cores that show this precisely and the lag in every cycles studied where CO2 follows by several hundred years as temps increase due to Milankovitch cycles primarily.
I know you are not a scientist Mr. Schneider, so I would not expect you to know these things, it took me many decades of education research, and experience to learn them all. But I do respect your expertise in whatever your primary field of work is, I’m sure you are quite accomplished and I respect that a great deal.
Michael, all people deserve respect, and respect is what I require in the comments forum on this website.
I’m sorry, Heath, but some views don’t deserve respect.
Keep it respectful everyone. You can disagree without being disagreeable.
Consider this example. First we have a general conclusory statement:
… so sloppy and unscientific as it was not credible, Anderegg’s also falls into this dubious category
So we have an opinion: Andregg’s study was not credible.
Here’s the evidence in support of that opinion: …….. [no evidence, no citations, no verifiable facts]. All we have is an opinion. What value is the opinion? none. What respect does it deserve? None.
Then we have this statement: “In my somewhat informal and unscientific surveys at the various AGU meetings, I would say … “
That’s an unscientific observation, an anecdote at best, from an anonymous internet commenter.
How can you respect an argument that claims a published study is sloppy and not credible without offering any facts in support of the criticism, and instead offers personal observations from an anonymous source? That’s just not the sort of argument that deserves respect.
Finally we get this statement: ” … as the law of uniformitarianism applies for these scientists, and climate scientists are ignorant of the laws of earth sciences.”
Which is a misstatement of the law of uniformatarianism. That law holds that the same forces and same processes that operate today also operated in the past. Global warming is based on the claim that CO2 is transparent to ultraviolet and reflects infra-red. It claims that that property of CO2 is observable now, and would have been observable in the past had anyone been there to observe it. It is consistent with uniformatariansim.
The claim of AGW is based on the observed fact that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has changed – and there’s nothing in the principle of uniformatarianism that precludes a change in the situation; indeed to claim that uniformatariansim means that everything always stays the same is absurd.
The upshot is that having falsly claimed that a particular published study (which showed almost unanimous support for AGW among relevant scientists) was only an internet poll, J now wants us to believe his claim that lots of scientists who work in the field disbelieve in AGW based on his anonymous claim of talking to unnamed people at unspecified events at unspecified times in the past. Do you really think that argument deserves respect?
Thank you for looking that up, Artiofab. And I’m thinking it’s time for me to step away from the internet.
You are correct arti, I was referring to this one:
http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Epdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
by Doran, et al. I assumed it was Duran et al, since the 97% number was used as a truth. Sorry about that. Ironically, this online poll was actually undertaken because the surveys of literature by Oreskes and others was so sloppy and unscientific as it was not credible, Anderegg’s also falls into this dubious category. In my somewhat informal and unscientific surveys at the various AGU meetings, I would say close to 80% of climate scientists think GW is dominantly caused by man, and is a great danger to society, but only about 50% think the solutions proposed by the left wing will work to cool the planet and lower sea levels, as Obama promised to do if elected. In the paloeclimatology community, dominated by each scientists and not computer programmers and modelers, I would say fewer than 40% believe as climate scientists do. The reasons are obvious, the paleoclimate record is quite clearly dominated by natural forces and cycles the same as today, as the law of uniformitarianism applies for these scientists, and climate scientists are ignorant of the laws of earth sciences.
As an aside, Anderegg et al (2010) was a literature review, not an online poll. To quote from that paper:
We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers and classified each researcher as either convinced by the evidence (CE) for anthropogenic climate change or unconvinced by the evidence (UE) for ACC. We compiled these CE researchers comprehensively (i.e., all names listed) from the following lists: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors (coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and contributing authors; 619 names listed), 2007 Bali Declaration (212 signers listed), Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) 2006 statement (120 names listed), CMOS 2008 statement (130 names listed), and 37 signers of open letter protesting The Great Global Warming Swindle film errors. After removing duplicate names across these lists, we had a total of 903 names.
We define UE researchers as those who have signed reputable statements strongly dissenting from the views of the IPCC. We compiled UE names comprehensively from the following 12 lists: 1992 statement from the Science and Environmental Policy Project (46 names), 1995 Leipzig Declaration (80 names), 2002 letter to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien (30 names), 2003 letter to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin (46 names), 2006 letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (61 names), 2007 letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (100 names), 2007 TV film The Great Global Warming Swindle interviewees (17 names), NIPCC: 2008 Heartland Institute document “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate,” ed. S. Fred Singer (24 listed contributors), 2008 Manhattan Declaration from a conference in New York City (206 names listed as qualified experts), 2009 newspaper ad by the Cato Institute challenging President Obama’s stance on climate change (115 signers), 2009 Heartland Institute document “Climate Change Reconsidered: 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)” (36 authors), and 2009 letter to the American Physical Society (61 names). After removing duplicate names across these lists, we had a total of 472 names. Links to
source documents are available at http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/∼prall/climate/list_sources.html.
Dr. J, I think you were thinking of a different survey.
OK, thanks EW-aif, I thought the train of thought in the thread was climate science, not general science psychology, but good. Dr. Curry used to be a very dedicated AGW believer, I once heard her speak at AGU blasting any critique of AGW and attacking any scientists who would support same. Her views have evolved, but obviously away from the dogma of the IPCC (BTW, headed by an industrial engineer, not an earth or climate scientist) and its’ obsession with silencing any dissent in our scientific community. Here is what she has said on her blog:
“I’ve been engaging with skeptics since 2006 (before starting Climate Etc., I engaged mainly at Climate Audit). People were suspicious and wondered what I was up to, but the vilification didn’t start until I recommended that people read The Hockey Stick Illusion. The book itself, plus more significantly my vilification simply for recommending that people read the book, has pushed me over the ledge and into a mode of aggressively challenging the IPCC consensus. . . . It is my sad conclusion that opening your mind on this subject sends you down the slippery slope of challenging many aspects of the IPCC consensus.Shortly after I started Climate Etc., I received this email message from a colleague:A few years ago, I started interacting with a skeptic who somehow passed through my “ignore skeptics” filter. He has an engineering degree and is quite knowledgable. My rationale that “all skeptics are troglodytes” has been tattered, and my view of the climate debate has irreversibly changed.Opening your mind on this subject is a slippery slope into listening to what skeptics have to say. Sure there are a lot of crazies out there, but there is some very serious skepticism at ClimateAudit and other technical skeptic and lukewarmer blogs. I look forward to a growing climate heretics club, where people that generally support the IPCC consensus (either currently or in the past) dare to question aspects of it.
[edit]
“Your evidence fails to support your claim, J. Instead, your evidence supports my conclusion.”
You’ll find that happens with alarming frequency, Mr. Shneider; I used to try and keep track of the number of times “Dr.” J tried to prove his point by linking directly to the very evidence that he’s incorrect, but I’ve long since lost track. Of course, what are we to expect from someone who complains that a bunch of links that he obviously never read for himself from someone who he disagrees with but has made no effort to understand were not “peer reviewed”, but presents as his own primary evidence a poorly-researched blog post from another non-climatologist that he also apparently didn’t bother to read?
DJ, read Mooney’s article. It is more about psychology than atmospheric physics. I checked on Dr. Judith Curry, whom you quote, and she does seem genuine, but her viewpoint is evolving. She is not a die-hard denier.
You’re wrong about my cites, too, J:
Your sources are not in peer reviewed literature,
I looked at the first two articles I cited. One was the Journal of Hydrometeorology of the American Meteorological Society. It is a peer-reviewed Journal. http://www.ametsoc.org/pubs/journals/jhm/index.html The other was WIRE’s Climate Change journal, also peer reviewed. http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-403397.html?al=eb
Again, ‘a tale … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’
Keep it respectful everyone. You can disagree without being disagreeable.
You are also ignorant of the philosophy of science, J.
… far short of absolute scientific proof of the AGW hypothesis …
There’s no such thing as absolute scientific proof of such theories as gravity. atoms, or Ohm’s law, either. There’s no such thing as absolute scientific proof of anything.
Go read Karl Popper, J. You’ll discover that science cannot prove anything, it can only falsify hypotheses. You’re search for absolute scientific proof is a fool’s errand.
So let’s assume, arguendo, that there’s no absolute scientific proof of AGW. Now the question becomes:
Will it be an absolute catastrophe, killing all multicellular life on earth? Or will it merely be devastating, bringing about the end of civilization? Or will it turn out that by some miracle nobody has yet been able to identify, there’s really no problem?
That’s the question: there’s no proof, there’s only uncertainty. That’s the nature of life: uncertainty. But only in a ‘tale … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ does one say “well, there’s no absolute proof that we’re all gonna die, so let’s keep partying!!”
I have never said Andy was a scientific expert in climate, I was merely referring to his blog which has interviews with real climate scientists and other scientists. Please read them and then tell me they are not qualified to discuss AGW if you can. And EW-aif, really after bashing Andy as unqualified scientifically to be a source of anything, THEN you reference Chris Mooney in Mother Jones???? The guy with an English BA is suddenly your expert on science? Please tell me you are joking.
DJ, Andy Revkin has a BA in biology, not geology, chemistry or physics, and an MA in journalism. He cannot be considered a scientist.
As far as ‘many scientists’ is concerned, try using a set that includes only scientists that have had at least one peer-reviewed article published in a scientific journal and see how many of that set don’t believe in global warming.
And here’s a link to an interesting article by Chris Mooney, “The Science of why we don’t believe in Science:”
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
Your sources are not in peer reviewed literature, and even so contain substantial uncertainty, “if” words, projections based on computer games pretending to be actual observational data, and many other “weasel words”, far short of absolute scientific proof of the AGW hypothesis or the hypothesis that same causes extreme weather. I could also pull out quotes from distinguished scientists and their work to rebut Hansen, but is there a point? The truth is that there is no scientific proof of a link of AGW and extreme weather, there are opinions and speculation on both sides, but no proof either way. Here is what Dr. Curry says about it in a recent Yale seminar:
“Judith Curry, chair of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
The substantial interest in attributing extreme weather events to global warming seems rooted in the perceived need for some sort of a disaster to drive public opinion and the political process in the direction of taking action on climate change. However, attempts to attribute individual extreme weather events, or collections of extreme weather events, may be fundamentally ill-posed in the context of the complex climate system, which is characterized by spatiotemporal chaos. There are substantial difficulties and problems associated with attributing changes in the average climate to natural variability versus anthropogenic forcing, which I have argued are oversimplified by the IPCC assessments. Attribution of extreme weather events is further complicated by their dependence on weather regimes and internal multi-decadal oscillations that are simulated poorly by climate models.
I have been completely unconvinced by any of the arguments that I have seen that attributes a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events to anthropogenic forcing. Improved analysis of the attribution of extreme weather events requires a substantially improved and longer database of the events. Interpretation of these events in connection with natural climate regimes such as El Nino is needed to increase our understanding of the role of natural climate variability in determining their frequency and intensity. Improved methods of evaluating climate model simulations of distributions of extreme event intensity and frequency in the context of natural variability is needed before any confidence can be placed in inferences about the impact of anthropogenic influences on extreme weather events. ”
And you link to the study by Anderegg, et al (and I am so happy you cited that one), started life as an article in Eos (as a 40 year AGU member that is our periodical). An article is nothing more than an Op/Ed, not a contribution to scientific research and not peer-reviewed. The Proceedings you cited as the next place it appeared, is likewise a non-peer reviewed source. And if you look closely at the methodology of this “survey”, you will notice it is an online poll, not a scientific poll with any rigor, and only 76 climate scientists chose to answer it. Hardly a basis of scientific conclusions. It is no better than the polls Heath runs on this blog, or any of a similar nature, including one done by Heartland, the Oregon Petition Project, etc. on the other side of this issue. All junk science, with no scientific credibility or value.
IP, I have been debating and researching this topic for over 35 years. It started as part of my thesis and dissertation work in grad school involving stable isotope geochemistry. Yes, I am obsessed with it, and any other scientific issue where politics and politicians try to involve themselves and obfuscate and obscure the full range of scientific opinion and data on an issue in order to cut directly to policy actions that please their special interests who fund their campaigns and pander to their base.
Your evidence fails to support your claim, J. Instead, your evidence supports my conclusion.
they think the signal is apparent for over 100 years, as here:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/evidenceforwarming.htm
I went to that link and I saw a very nice graph. It has global average temperature plooted as a blue line with the scale on the right. I see it bouncing around 56.7 from 1880 to 1930 (or so) and then heading up to a peak around 57.4 in 1945 before heading back down to around 57.1 in about 1980. So between 1980 and 1980 we see the temperature bouncing mostly between about 56.7 to 57.1, with a higher peak of 57.4 in 1945. That’s a range of about 0.4 degrees over 100 years.
After 1980 it starts heading sharply upwards, going from 57.1 up to about 58 by the end of the graph. That’s an increase of .9 degrees in 30 years.
I said that ” … the last 30 years. That’s (more or less) the same period during which we’ve seen the big effects of global climate change.” And that’s exactly what your evidence shows. A big change since 1980, a much smaller change since then.
You’re choosing to mix together a long period of little change with a short period of big change. That’s a deliberate choice, and it’s obviously a choice which will stretch the big change out over a longer period, making it look like a much smaller change. That’s what I call playing games with the data.
Where is the scientific paper. peer-reviewed, that shows this or any extreme weather is caused by man?
Well, some of them are in the link I gave you a few comments below. In that link you’ll find this:
The fact is that the recent literature examining warming-driven drought in America could not be clearer in warning about a “semi-permanent” (or worse) drought in both the South West and the Central Great Plains and “More and more of the Midwest.” Here are two studies that lay things out starkly:
Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “Drought under global warming: a review” (2010)
Michael Wehner et al., “Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico” (2011)
I would also add the 2010, Environmental Research Letters article “Characterizing changes in drought risk for the United States from climate change.”
And that’s not even counting the Journal of Geophysical Research study that Hansen himself co-authored in 1990, “Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought,” which projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/13/483247/james-hansen-is-correct-about-catastrophic-projections-for-us-drought-if-we-dont-act-now/?mobile=nc
And, of course, there’s the paper I cited and linked in my second comment on this post:
The effects of climate change on the hydrology and water resources of the Coloraedo River basin
http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/node/495
And where is the evidence that only 3% of climate scientists object to AGW theory? Where is the poll, paper, etc.? Don’t have any of these? Then I call horse hockey, it is all made up political talking points from the left wing.
122 sources on that question are discussed, and cited, and linked, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
As for the 3% figure, consider this:
97–98% of the most published climate researchers say humans are causing global warming.
Wikipedia, supra, citing Anderegg, William R L; James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider (2010). “Expert credibility in climate change”. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107 (27): 12107–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107. PMC 2901439. PMID 20566872.
The scientific concensus is clear. We’re causing global warming. I must again say that your comment is ‘a tale … full of sound and fury, signyfying nothing’
Actually, Dr. J, it is your reading comprehension that is faulty; for starters, all I pointed out was that – like the journalist whose blog you tried to use as evidence instead of actual scientific peer-reviewed work (and which didn’t say what you thought it said) – I have just enough scientific training to tell when someone has absolutely no grasp of the scientific method and possesses research skills that would get the typical first-year grad student laughed out. Furthermore, you quoted only part of Mr. Shneider’s response and claimed that was the entirety of his argument, thus once again demonstrating that, rather than thinking like a scientist and collecting all the evidence before making your conclusions, you pick the most simplistic explanation to support conclusions that you have already made. Nor did I ever say that you deny climate change, merely that you deny anthropogenic climate change, a viewpoint that you’re so obsessed with that you consider the fact that we’re the only country on Earth still having a childish political argument over whether its real or not that you’ve chosen to ignore that in the scientific community, your views have already been debunked. It takes a remarkable lack of self-awareness to insist that everyone else must think your way despite the fact that you seem incapable of providing actual evidence, and then have the nerve to call the other side draconian; I suggest you add that to the ever-increasing list of words that you don’t actually know the meaning of.
And IP, you have some education in osteology, and you want to argue climate with a scientist with 4 university degrees and a paleoclimatologist? You’re kidding right? Next time I have a bone issue, I will defer to your superior education and training.
IP, your reading comprehension is faulty. Mr. Schneider said: ”The precipitation trend from 1895 to present doesn’t mean much, either. Go to the NOAA site and look at precipitation from 1980 to 2011. You’ll see a decline of .88 inches per decade. That’s a steep decline over the last 30 years. That’s (more or less) the same period during which we’ve seen the big effects of global climate change.”
So yes he did say my 100 year or so data set is irrelevant while his 30 year set is very important. And as to only the last 30 years showing the effects of AGW, that is not what most scientists think, they think the signal is apparent for over 100 years, as here:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/evidenceforwarming.htm
So where is the accompanying disaster of droughts all this time? There is no connection, that’s why there is no evidence of it.
So why are the precip trends of the last 30 years so much of a smoking gun to put all the blame on man? Where is the scientific paper. peer-reviewed, that shows this or any extreme weather is caused by man? And where is the evidence that only 3% of climate scientists object to AGW theory? Where is the poll, paper, etc.? Don’t have any of these? Then I call horse hockey, it is all made up political talking points from the left wing.
And I never said I “deny” climate change. The climate is changing, and it is partly, but not primarily caused by man’s activities, and a small superset of that is CO2 emissions. I think the preponderance of scientific evidence in the paleoclimate record shows man’s influence to be weak and ineffective compared to natural forces, i.e., the Milankovitch cycles which have a long history of proof in the scientific record and literature.
And as to the politics of all this, as that is where this sits today, just look at left wing political operatives (this is name calling? It is a fact) arguing with a scientist about the science, my views are today winning the battle. Even Obamas gave it up, as evidenced by his admissions in the SOTU speech this year. You draconian alarmists have lost in Congress, the state of NM (thank you EIB, for a long awaited scientific ruling on GHGs), and the world of public opinion. You have lost, you can get used to it or get over it.
Dr. J:
Neither Mr. Schneider nor myself actually said that; perhaps you should try reading what we actually wrote instead of what you wish we had written? I know that involves paying attention rather than distilling our words to simplistic and inaccurate sound-bites (an interesting enough tactic even if our actual words weren’t on the same screen for all to see, and hardly becoming to a self-proclaimed scientist), but it might result in fewer demonstrations of your own lack of reading comprehension skills, to say nothing of you abysmal research skills.
Considering that your grasp of the scientific method is tenuous at best, your credentials have a tendency to fluctuate wildly depending on the topic in question, and that your idea (this time) of “evidence” against anthropogenic climate change consist first of data that actually supports the theory followed by a single blog post written by a journalist whose scientific credentials consist solely of a three-and-a-half-decade old BA in biology (not climatology) – and who incidentally considers himself a skeptic, rather than an outright denier like yourself – whose own idea of evidence (and in a demonstration of truly dreadful journalistic method) is to quote two atmospheric scientists disagreeing not over the scope nor existence of anthropogenic climate change but disagreeing with each other about the nature of how badly an astronomer (also not a climatologist) worded his support for the theory. Not only do you not read the positions to which you are responding, Dr. J, but it seems that you rarely read the documents that you provide in support of the positions you are espousing to debate the positions that you just make up to fill in for the positions that you didn’t read in the first place. Were I not in professional politics, your talents for fantastical byzantine self-debate would actually be astounding.
It should be noted that just three percent of climatologists deny anthropogenic climate change; three percent isn’t just inside the margin-of-error… it is the margin-of-error. Indeed, considering that almost all of the barely eighteen percent of scientists from every field who believe that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real are in fields other that climatology, I think I’ll go with the findings of competent scientists in relevant fields using demonstrated data that, inconveniently enough for you, I’m perfectly capable of understanding. One of the advantages to my own background is that, like Mr. Revkin, I have just enough scientific training and field experience (in this case in osteology) that I have no difficulty seeing right through your complete lack of understanding of basic scientific procedures and modern research ethics. You remind me of a quote from Ghostbusters (since this is apparently the weekend for deputizing movie quotes into debates): “Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable; you are a poor scientists, Doctor.”
I have a suggestion for you, Dr. J; if you ever get a brain tumor and need neurosurgery, how about going to a dermatologist and asking if he can do the procedure for you instead of a neurosurgeon? That is literally what you’re talking about here; simply because a bunch of petroleum geologists claim that something they don’t even study isn’t real doesn’t mean that they have the equal credibility in the field as literally thousands of individuals who do study that particular science who happen to disagree with them. If those same people want to talk to me about shale deposits, I’m all ears, but for climatology, I think I’ll stick with climatologists.
You failed to answer the objection, J. Claiming that you are an expert and that we should simply believe your claims is utter nonsense. It’s a well known fallacy called “argument from authority” (1) – which, since you haven’t actually told us what sort of scientist you claim to be, or where you practice your science, or where you were educated, is once again ‘a tale … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
… politics by political operatives who are not scientists, I am.
Longer is not always better for data series’. That’s the point I was making when I suggested that a temperature record averaged over the last 25,000 years wouldn’t tell us too much about what to expect in the next 50 years.
If you are looking to see whether there’s an effect on precipitation from global warming, you need to look at precipitation since global warming got going. Saying “We’ve got 100 years of data from before global warming got going” doesn’t tell you squat about whether warming has reduced precipitation.
I’m really, really tired of your name calling. If you can’t argue from the evidence without calling names, then I don’t care what degrees you claim nor what schools you went to, you’re not a scientist. The essence of science is to look at evidence. For example, sneering at the criticisms of the opinion piece you cite by saying “dismissing Andy Revkin’s objective science from actual scientists in his NYT blog speaks for itself” is garbage, not science. Go read it, and find some answers to the criticisms. Argument from personal incredulity is a fallacy, too. Repeating the word “scientist” doesn’t make you a scientist, nor make your claims scientific.
(1) http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html
I find it amazing people actually can say that a 100 year data set is meaningless, while a 30 year data set is significant. Could it be the 100 year set doesn’t show what your politics believes? Exactly. And to quote and believe a source such as thinkprogress, while dismissing Andy Revkin’s objective science from actual scientists in his NYT blog speaks for itself, politics by political operatives who are not scientists, I am.
You are playing games with the data. I looked at the NOAA precipitation data which Skeptic was kind enough to link to.
Yes, if you are careful to choose the period correctly (as Dr J in his self-proclaimed “scientific” post does) you’ll get a positive trend. Of course, If we look at temperature data from, say, 25,000 BC to today we’ll see a long term positive trend – but it won’t mean much. The precipitation trend from 1895 to present doesn’t mean much, either.
Go to the NOAA site and look at precipitation from 1980 to 2011. You’ll see a decline of .88 inches per decade. That’s a steep decline over the last 30 years. That’s (more or less) the same period during which we’ve seen the big effects of global climate change.
Will the decline continue, or will it reverse itself again? That’s the crucial question. That’s the question we need to answer, and as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The fact that things were pretty good - or, at least, up and down - from 1890 to 1980 doesn’t tell us much about 2012 – 2075.
To answer the question about the future you need to build models and test them. That’s what they did in the paper I cited.
Those models say that the drought we’ve seen increasingly since 1980 will continue, and worsen. Citing data from 1895 doesn’t challenge that conclusion.
‘nother topic: I thought that some wind was caused by ocean surface temperature (it’s a contributor to hurricanes, I think). Some winds around fires are generated by the fires themselves through the heating of the air, and in NM we certainly see surface winds caused by, or exacerbated by, solar warming of the surface (dust devils, for example, are caused by solar warming of the surface and consequent rising of the warmed air).
‘nother: of course there have been droughts before. Anthropogenic climate change is certainly not the sole or only cause of droughts. However, there’s nothing very persuasive in this chain of logic:
P1: there were droughts before anthropogenic climate change
C: therefore anthropogenic climate change cannot cause droughts.
‘nother: if anyone wants to pursue the NYT opinion piece Dr J cites, you might want to go read this:
The response by NOAA’s Martin Hoerling to James Hansen’s recent op-ed does not reflect the scientific literature.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/13/483247/james-hansen-is-correct-about-catastrophic-projections-for-us-drought-if-we-dont-act-now/?mobile=nc
Skeptic:
You probably shouldn’t take your cues in research-techniques from Dr. J; he has a bad habit of providing us with direct evidence that he’s incorrect, as you have both done here. Setting aside the fact that you both ignored mean temperature increases (which is kind of sad when one considers that the data for such is as readily available as the precipitation data you pointed us to and on the exact same site), you also made the remarkable error of ignoring the nature of the data you pointed us to… which shows that the long-term precipitation increases are statistically miniscule, and that for the past thirty years there has been a remarkable 24% decrease in annual precipitation (accompanied by an equally extreme increase in mean temperatures, which also reflects a long-term trend), with precipitate periods between droughts being markedly shorter and the drought periods being of increasing and historically-unprecedented length and severity. Anthropogenic climate change – about which almost all claims against its existence occur entirely in the political sphere rather than the scientific – has caused demonstrable extreme variations in weather patterns, and using short-term weather as an excuse to pretend that long-term climatological effects don’t exist simply because you find reality uncomfortable isn’t really conducive to solving a problem that no sensible person is actually ignoring.
You also chose to dismiss Ms. Wedum’s argument by bolstering it; pressure gradients are strongly effected by mean temperatures – which the average elementary school science teacher could tell you – and if you think that planetary shape, rotation, orbit, and continental location “will not change”, then your grasp of geology and astronomy are limited to say the least (though these are, of course, far slower variations that remain unaffected by man).
I know plenty of people who share your particular affliction; the more evidence in favor of something that disagrees with something that you have already chosen to believe, the more of a “skeptic” you become. Perhaps you should consider reviewing your standards of evidence.
It should also be noted that whenever this same affliction manifests itself in “Dr.” J, he typically uses the phrase “assault on science” whenever he is referring to what most scientists within their own respective fields would refer to as… science.
And, from one of my previous scientific posts on this drought subject, here we see what the scientific data shows for precipitation trends since 1895.
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/05/our-new-analysis-of-united-states-precipitation-trends/
NM shows an INCREASING precipitation trend of 2% to 15%, not a prolonged drought.
EW: The energy of high winds comes from pressure gradients, not the total thermal content. Those pressure gradients are determined by factors, many of which ( earth’s shape, rotation and orbit, the location of the oceans and continents ) will not change.
As for children dying of malnutrition, aside from war torn areas, obesity and diabetes are now a bigger threat than malnutrition.
Doris: drought is always a concern ( ask the old timers here about the 1950s ), but globally, agricultural production continues to increase.
In New Mexico, agriculture in the modern age has always been completely dependent upon irrigation which never has been sustainable,
but if one looks at actual data :
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/state.html
one recognizes that the long term trend is one of INCREASE in precipitation in New Mexico.
Michael: do you believe there never was a drought before?
Look at the data http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/state.html and observe that the long term trend is increasing precipitation in New Mexico.
Yes, it is on cue, the left wing has just organized yet another assault on science with old wives tales and lies to try and scare and mislead people about extreme weather events and man’s dubious, and unproven role in same. This from Andy Revkin gives a good view of what real climate scientists say about this ridiculous conjecture and speculation:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/another-view-on-extreme-weather-in-a-warming-climate/?src=tp
As if on cue…
Drought caused by global warming was predicted 8 years ago. (1) I’m shocked, shocked, to discover we’re having a drought. I’m also shocked, shocked to hear that “unseasonal” storms are accompanying the climate change.
I’m not, however, shocked that someone would write an article about the drought without mentioning man-caused climate change, nor that this site would publish such an article. There’s a reason that Americans are becoming steadily more ignorant and less knowledgeable, and the reason is articles such as this.
Good luck to the state engineer’s task force in figuring out how to deal with global warming. I know that our governor is taking the climate change problem seriously when she appoints a task force.
(1) http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/node/495
Yes, EW-aif, those who continue to deny women access to birth control methods should listen up. If crops are destroyed and people can’t find food supplies, we will have malnutrition and starvation. Did we not just have a big food drive here in the USA to supply food banks to deliver food to the hungry. We are seeing climate change whether you want to believe it or not. Then we have all the waste from the nuclear plant destruction in Japan polluting the Pacific Ocean. Man has made a giant mess and needs to start figuring out how to clean it up.
“Chihuahua has also counted at least 723 forest fires since the beginning of the year. …” And the news reports usually mention that high winds exacerbated the devastation. And where does the energy for those high winds come from? Global warming of the atmosphere.
The Catholic Church and those right-wing Republicans that are trying to ban birth control better get a clue and reverse their position. We are going to hear more and more about people helplessly watching as their children die of malnutrition and disease.
A drought story without the words ‘anthropogenic climate change’??