Climate Change Revisited

Since you gave me no links...  I randomly pulled a bunch out of google.

Pro Con Climate Change
Climate Debate Daily
U Chicago Climate Change Debate
Should Congress Address Climate Change?
ICECAP
Live Science Climate Change
CNN Costello Debate Climate Change
Guardian 5 Antarctic Facts
Intergovernmental Panel on CC
Skeptical Science
Climate Change Facts
UN Climate Summit
G2A Global Warming Revisited
Science of Global Warming Seeds2Learn Software

So here we go with some of the usual questions:

• Does abnormal climate change exist?
• If so, are the behaviors of humans causing this?
• If so, why are the deniers so adamant?
• If not, why do so many people believe it does?
• If so, how bad will it get?
• If so, how much financial and other sacrifices do we make today?
• If so, what will be the benefits?

Do we stop using coal to generate electricity immediately?  Is the problem really that severe?

Do we use our finances for "clean" energy rather than food, education, defense, etc?

Thoughts?

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW)

Climate Agreement

A Gift from Laurie.

196 countries approve historic climate agreement

“History will remember this day,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after the pact was gaveled through to thunderous applause. “The Paris agreement on climate change is a monumental success for the planet and its people.”

I haven't read that much about it, but the environmentalists seem reasonably happy about it, though far from ecstatic. The opinion that I have picked up, which I agree with, is there is still a very long ways to go in changing to a clean energy economy and the need for activism continues.

Here are a couple more links related to my climate deal topic. I really do think this is a very important agreement, thus making this a very historic day.

Breaking: World Leaders Just Agreed to a Landmark Deal to Fight Global Warming (the Mother Jones climate reporter seems quite happy about it)

as does President Obama Follow Along: A Global Agreement to Act on Climate (Obama speaks at about 45:30)

FMEA, CAGW and 97%

As I mentioned, I am commenting on MinnPost No Pause but Much Disruption.  The discussion got me thinking about Failure Mode Effect Analysis. (FMEA)  This a tool that we use when looking for potential problems in order to manage them proactively.   

• Probability (P): likelihood of occurrence
• Severity (S): how bad will the consequences be
• Detection (D):  likelihood of issue being found before failure
• Risk level (P*S) and (D)

This got me wondering what does this questionable 97% actually support?

1. Human actions may be affecting the climate slightly (low severity)
2. Human actions are moderately affecting the climate. (some adapting reqd)
3. Human actions are significantly affecting the climate (major migrations & adapting reqd)
4. Human actions are devastating the climate (there will be no more humans on earth)
5. Other?

As I have said before, I do agree that human actions are warming our atmosphere to some extent.  Every time we burn fossil fuels or use electricity, heat energy is released due to the burning process and/or the inefficiency of the mechanical device. (ie engine, etc)  All that potential energy is being dug up and made active within the Earth's atmosphere, so unless the Earth's atmosphere is losing this energy, it is still here as heat.

With that all said, I could believe that 97% of scientists could believe in #1 above.  The question I have is how many believe in numbers 3 & 4?

Forbes: Doctoring 97%
Pop Tech 97% Study Falsely Classifies Papers
Wiki 97% and anthropogenic global warming (AGW)

Forbes: Peer Reviewed Survey
CSW: Taylor Misinterprets
Science Blogs: Denialism From Forbes

Friends of Science Report
DITC: So Called 97%
Watts Up: 97% Consensus Disproven

This came from the Watts Up link and makes my point.

"A tweet in President Obama’s name had assumed that the earlier, flawed paper, by John Cook and others, showed 97% endorsement of the notion that climate change is dangerous.

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”."

Thoughts?

Earth Warming and Resistance Forces

Since I am back in the states, exhausted and the weather is beautiful.

I am going to be a lazy blogger.  Lance wrote this piece that the CAGW folks loved.  However I asked one question and did not get any answers.   MinnPost Earth Warming Faster  Thoughts?

"There is a form of insanity peculiar to humans that comes into play when politics and money are allowed to dominate in discussions in which they have no legitimate place, or only peripheral involvement at most. It is called "magical thinking".

People, most people, are so used to feeding every issue under the sun into the political meat grinder that they think they can do it with physics too, as if the basic laws by which the universe operates can be influenced by opinion polls, PAC money, votes (bought & sold), and postings on comment pages. I blame it on our abysmal educational effort in science and mathematics. People opt out of the "hard" classes, but then proceed to blather about the topics they didn't study.

MODELS: AGW denialists love to attack climate models as being inaccurate. You know what? They are. That's why they're just models, which are by definition imprecise approximations of the real world, using only a subset of all the myriad variables that go into the real world system. They are useful in testing which variables are the most important, thus improving our understanding of the natural system, and over time become more precise as they are adjusted based on new data. But this is all a red herring. We don't need models to know what happens when the Earth is out of energy balance, because we have ample record of what *has actually happened* in the Earth's past when energy imbalance has occurred due to nonhuman forcings. We also have the examples of Venus and Mars, which started out much like the early Earth, but went in radically different directions. The bottom line is that when more energy is coming into the system than is going back out, the world warms, and this has various consequences to the climate system and the biosphere. When warming is extreme or very rapid, the climate system is destabilized and species go extinct. It's all there in the paleo record, you only have to look.

PHYSICS: CO2, methane, and other gases are greenhouse gases. This means when they are present in an atmosphere, they retain heat by preventing it from radiating back into space. There's no good arguing about it, this is a physical fact. Add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and more energy is retained in the system. Period, end of story. As I and many others have noted, physics cannot be bargained with, wished away, or voted out of office. It just is, and it had better be accounted for when making decisions. Ask any engineer or astronaut about physics. Leave it out of your calculations and disaster results.

ENERGY: The various forcings impacting the Earth's energy balance can be measured with precision. Pre-industrial civilization, the Earth was more or less in energy balance. Natural forcings would sometimes push the climate toward cooling, and sometimes toward warming, but over time the system would re-balance. Human activity has now pushed the Earth out of energy balance. A NASA study (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120130b/) of the Earth's energy balance during the period 2005-2010 - a period of unusually low solar activity - found that reduced solar radiance had a negative forcing of 0.25 watts per square meter of the Earth's surface. If the Earth were in energy balance, that would result in cooling. However, the carbon people are pumping into the atmosphere produces a positive (warming) forcing of 0.58 watts per square meter, more than twice the natural negative forcing (there will never be another ice age as long as humans maintain an industrial civilization). This energy is not being radiated back into space, it is staying in the system. 0.58 watts per square meter. Multiply that times the surface area of the Earth - that's a heck of a lot of energy. In order to restore energy balance, atmospheric CO2 would need to be reduced to no more than 350 ppm. We are now at 400 ppm, give or take a couple of ppm. The last time this happened, horses and camels lived in arctic. Given that we are doing nothing effective to reduce emissions, we will certainly reach 450 ppm. The last time that happened, there was no sheet ice anywhere on the planet, and that means dramatically higher sea levels.

TIPPING POINTS: The issue is not just the CO2 level, that isn't even the most important issue by itself. The real danger is crossing a tipping point after which warming accelerates dramatically and out of any hope of control. In the past, long periods of warming led eventually to the melting of methane hydrates, releasing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere, which abruptly spiked the temperature. Methane lasts only a short time in the atmosphere, but is oxidized to CO2, which lasts a long time. Temperatures spike, and all the extra CO2 holds in the excess energy. Civilization would end, as quite likely would the human (and all or nearly all other) species. Depending on how things play out, the world could enter a Venus Syndrome phase of unrestrained warming. It's just nothing to play with. In recent years, elevated release of methane has been detected in the arctic. It seems the melting may have already started. We had better hope not, because if it has, we have no hope of stopping it no matter what we do.

BUT NO WARMING?: Nonsense. It just hasn't been where you expected. According to the same study, "the upper ocean has absorbed 71 percent of the excess energy and the Southern Ocean, where there are few Argo floats, has absorbed 12 percent. The abyssal zone of the ocean, between about 3,000 and 6,000 meters (9,800 and 20,000 feet) below the surface, absorbed five percent, while ice absorbed eight percent and land four percent." The energy is there, the ocean has absorbed most of it. The ocean may temporarily be keeping the Piper at bay, but the Piper will be paid in the end.

CONSEQUENCES: Greenhouse gases have risen this high and higher in the distant past, and the Earth has been far warmer than it is now. Life survived. Life did, but not most species. Once major difference between then and now is that pre-humans, these changes happened over periods of thousands and tens of thousands of years. Species had time to adapt if they could. They had time to migrate. Not so, now. We are accomplishing in a couple of centuries what took tens of thousands of years through natural means. The natural world has no time to adapt. We are already in the midst of a 6th Great Extinction, mostly due to human activity. We have also confiscated and farmed or developed vast areas of habitat, and imposed blockades on most migration routes. Adding human induced climate change to the pressures we have already put on the biosphere means that most species will not be able to adapt, with enormous risk of wholesale collapse. If that doesn't scare you, you're not thinking hard enough. That is the chief problem from my point of view, because as much as we might like to think we're separate from nature, or somehow above and in control of it, we are not. We cannot survive without the web of life that supports us, and it is in imminent peril. That doesn't even get to other consequences, such as agricultural disruption (7+ billion people well on our way to 10 billion, and they all want to be fed), sea level rise when the ice melts (how many trillion $ to move our seaports "inland", or try to shelter them with massive seawalls?), acidification of the oceans (attacks the food web from the bottom up), human migrations (if you think immigration is a problem now, wait until the heat is on), and the list goes on.

The part of all this that makes me angry is that the denialists are willing to subject their descendants to all of this, mainly because they don't want to spend any money now to change how we do business, or compromise their lifestyles in any way for the benefit of our posterity, or because they calculate they can cynically use the issue to win elections in the short term. The Koch brothers I understand - they're in it for the money and the power, and they won't be around for the consequences, so what the hell. But why their disciples, who are not rich and powerful and will be victimized by all of this, allow themselves to be used so cynically is something that escapes me. I don't understand how they can care so little for their grandkids and great-grandkids. I can only put it down to gaps in education.

I am reminded that Carl Sagan warned that advanced civilizations may be rare, because they may tend to snuff themselves. With regard to climate, he said "Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished."

Carl was wise. And we can no longer tolerate ignorance and complacency in such matters." Lance



""Natural forcings would sometimes push the climate toward cooling, and sometimes toward warming, but over time the system would re-balance." So if humans are accelerating the balance in one direction, when and how will nature adjust to push it back? The CAGW folks seem to deny that Mother Nature has self corrected before and will again.

As for Venus and Mars, maybe they are just like the story of the 3 bears. Venus was too close to the sun, and Mars was too far from the sun, whereas Earth was just right..." G2A

Global Climate Change - Cause?

Let it not be said that I don't listen to the readers.  However I do like to keep topics separated in the name of not watering down a particular topic.  So I have moved the Climate change comments over here.  Let er rip...

By the way, this all happened when Clayton said...

"I know your type. How about climate change. Even though climate is not your field I bet you have decided human induced climate change is fantasy. Why not go after the scientists for that."

And of course my answer is that I think we have in the past...
G2A EPA Moratorium and Ads 
G2A Could I be Mistaken
G2A Correlation vs Causation

Climate Change... Again

"Climate change is huge with many many many causal factors, many possible reactions and change is very very very slow."  G2A

"Off topic, I assume, but you should know that a new peer-reviewed paper has proven that science CANNOT accurately predict climate change. The climate system and its interactions are too complex, too poorly understood, and woefully incorrectly "modeled." Basing any public policy on the so-called climate models is slightly less sensible than basing it on the reading of chicken bones." Jerry

Climate Change Proof?

From over here.  And based on a Flat Earther Piece.  I asked Jerry...  "What evidence would convince you that human created green house gases are causing and will continue to cause the world to heat at an increasing rate?" Jerry's response was.

Jerry's Response was:  "OK. What evidence would convince me?

• IF the actual temperature records ever started to track the much higher predictions of the computerized climate models and IF those climate models were sufficiently precise (not +/- 100%) 

• IF it could be proven that TOTAL CO2 was the proximate and essential cause of that warming.

• IF it could be shown that manmade CO2 was the principal component of the increase in CO2

then all of them together would be a basis for concern. Since NONE of those things are happening in the real world, after thirty years of doom saying and a multitude of failed predictions, count me a skeptic. Your turn."

How accurate are climate model predictions?

Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?

NASA Causes

EPA Green House Gases

TS.2.8 Changes in Carbon and Other BiogeochemicalCycles

Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles

Why so much concern about CO2

Since I doubt I will ever convince a Flat Earther like Jerry, here are my simplistic views just to get them down in writing:

• Given the limited data available to the scientists in 1970, it seems their predictions are pretty good.
• I mean they had to forecast almost everything. How and where population would grow? What power sources would change?  What power sources they would use?
• And just think that we had just started monitoring a bunch of the factors that are in play.  I mean satellites were yet to be common.  And computers were rare.
• Per the sources above, there are many factors and gases in play.  
• The reason carbon dioxide is focused on is that it does not breakdown and disappear as quickly as the other gases.
• Also, it is a gas that we can control the human emission of.
• From my understanding, humans in essence are starting a chain reaction. When we started releasing all these gases into the atmosphere during the industrial revolution, we triggered a warming event.
• Unfortunately the warming and melting, just like the pumping, mining and burning are releasing carbon that had been securely on or in the ground, ice, etc.

So Jerry believes that humans releasing all of these stored chemicals into the atmosphere will have no negative consequence.  He believes that plants will just absorb it all or something?

This research leaves me with one question...

• If not humans, what is causing the continual rise in the levels of all of these green house gases to historic levels?

US and Paris Climate Pact

Since people here love to disagree about climate change and how the USA should proceed, here is some more fresh meat. CNN Paris Climate Pact Opinion Piece

And I seem to agree with Tillerson.

“It’s important that the US maintain its seat at the table,” Tillerson told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations during his confirmation hearing on 11 January. The threat of global warming is real and “requires a global response”, he added. “No one country is going to solve this on its own.”

When asked whether greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities cause climate change, Tillerson said that “the increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere [is] having effect”. But, he added, “our ability to predict that effect is very limited”.

I mean ExxonMobil certainly seems to believe.

"The risk of climate change is clear and the risk warrants action. Increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere are having a warming effect. There is a broad scientific and policy consensus that action must be taken to further quantify and assess the risks.

It often amazes me how many people want to deny the potential catastrophic risks, defund the research and stop the measured improvements. The good news is that apparently the big business are driving change at the request of their customers. I just heard that report yesterday and found it interesting.

RAS Climate Measurement and Management

Going with Jon's comment from the previous post:

"I think there are a lot of people out there who think the way to address climate issues is to develop more complicated thermometers. "

Being a "Plan, Do, Check, Act" guy, I really like good thermometers when it comes to changing the climate. Assuming the environment is closed and can be adjusted, as it is in companies and schools.

Now, I work for an incredibly competitive company that promotes global free trade. We actively pursue productivity and efficiency gains. We consistently work to eliminate waste and still produce results. How else will we succeed on the global stage ???

Ironically, a key aspect of this effort revolves around having incredibly good climate measurement systems. Now this doesn't come cheap, however it is still an excellent investment. Some of the benefits include:

• Employees that are unable to perform well in a position can be trained/coached or shifted to a different role that better matches their strengths and passion. Or their employment can be terminated if a good fit can not be found. This is typically good for the employee and the company.
• Managers and Supervisors that are unable to attain results while keeping their employees engaged and motivated receive the same options and treatment as noted above.
• Overall, the key is that the environment is maintained to ensure that Managers, Supervisor's and Employees are treated well. Therefore we all strive to achieve the goals for the good of ourselves, the company and our stakeholders.

With this in mind, I was fascinated or horrified to learn how little climate measuring and management occurs at RAS. I mean how do you manage the environment without good thermometers? Here are typical tools used at my company that should be implemented:

• annual performance plan creation (contains~10 SMART goals directly related to the RAS goals) (describing personal improvement and performance)
• quarterly performance reviews / discussion (Spvr/Employee)
• yearly 360 degree feedback surveys (ie nothing fancy... send an 8 question survey to co-workers and parents with results sent to Spvr)
• Annual Employee Opinion Surveys (example) (Identifies Enterprise issues and Poor Managers)
• Act on the Information !!!! Need to show results or people will not believe you are serious about improving things !!!!

From what I understand, very little of this occurs... Please correct me if I am incorrect... Thoughts encouraged !!!

More on Climate Change

From Laurie:

"Nothing I read lately on healthcare interests me enough to share or comment, but something I read on climate change does. There is this from K.Drum:

Our Approach to Climate Change Isn’t Working. Let’s Try Something Else.

I don't have the energy right now to read the Doom's day link Drum's post references. But here it is for people here to also ignore, as this topic never gets much interest here except from Jerry:

The Uninhabitable Earth Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

Need to Address Climate Before 2020

Laurie said...

Arguments here about poverty and the safety net never go anywhere so I am going off topic. My number one issue is really related to the environment. As half a bible verse says "The poor you will always have with you" but the time to address climate change is now. 50 years and even 5 years from now will be too late.

These experts say we have until 2020 to get climate change under control. And they’re the optimists.

Of course I find this humorous since we often get stuck on climate change also...

Climate Change Continuum

So where do you fit on my newest creation?  Jerry and I were arguing Climate Change again and I said that I like the work of Judith Curry.  She is an expert who has the blog Climate Etc.  My belief is that she believes:

• the use of fossil fuels is warming the climate
• that the science is still immature, especially the forecasting
• other factors may be more significant in the future
• people need low cost energy
• clean energy & cheap energy must be balanced
• people should be preparing for extreme whether events either way
• alarmists abound and are confusing people

So I know that Jerry is a Denier and most of the other commenters are Believers or CAGW'ers... But I was not sure where that leaves folks like Judith and myself.  So I created a new continuum for your comments and critiques !!! :-)   (click it to zoom)

More Climate Change Info

Scientific American The Oceans Are Heating Up Faster Than Expected
Wiki History of climate change science


G2A Scientist Apparently Know All
G2A Climate Balance

Which Expert?

 So one of my FB Friends sees himself as an expert in science and education, which makes sense since he is a high school science teacher.  With this in mind he is often condescending and insulting regarding my differing thoughts regarding education improvement, helping poor kids learn and climate change.

Which of course makes sense since I certainly am not a Teacher or a Scientist. Here is a sampling his latest lecturing...

"Your callous “know it all” opinion is typical of the lazy Republicans I have dealt with who value their ideology over anything else even at the expense of the environment. You have no idea what I believe about supporting public schools, nor do you know what issues I am talking about. You have never valued by expertise in that field . And I’m not going to get into it with you because the issues do not match with your perceptions and you are unwilling to listen to anyone that may know more than you about it." 

"I always seek out, listen to and discuss a topic from people in a particular field who have spent their lives working in that field. I value their input before making assumptions about a particular topic in that field."

Now I am not angry or offended, I do throw a lot of ideas out there but hopefully with adequate sources, data, etc to pretty much back them up. However I understand how folks can think that I am not listening / learning.

Well there is the lead up to this post which is labelled Which Expert? for a reason...  Here are a couple of our favorite topics:

1. How to ensure all mentally capable children are academically capable when they graduate from High School? 
2. What should be done regarding man made climate change?
3. Other...

Just to explain my expertise for folks who are not familiar, I am a Professional Engineer with an MBA and significant experience as a 6 Sigma Black Belt.  I have spent ~30 years leading cross functional teams to solve problems, fix things / processes, develop new products or execute projects of different types.  Some a week long and some several years.

In summary I have some general experience in many things, however my true strength is in listening to and working through others who are much more capable than I am in the areas of study / experience.  I probe, prod, promote collaboration, organize, challenge group think, track, analyze, brain storm, track, nag, time keep, etc.

SO given this problem statement: "How to ensure all mentally capable children are academically capable when they graduate from High School?"  Which experts should be involved in solving the challenge?  I mean imparting knowledge in the classroom (ie teaching) is a part of the issue certainly, so I am happy to listen to teachers about how discipline, teaching, technologies, etc can be improved.  They are the experts.

However I would argue that the performance management, staffing, compensation, termination policies and other issues are key to ensure that the Teachers are performing at a high standard. Which leaves me wondering who are the experts in performance management maintenance and improvement?  I certainly do not think it is the employees (ie Teachers), though they should be communicated with regularly.

And we have not even gotten into where children spend most of their youth and how that impacts their academic performance.

And when given this problem statement: "What should be done regarding man made climate change?" I have no doubt that a Science Teacher may be up to speed with the latest scientific releases.  However does that make them more capable of understanding and balancing the massive financial trade offs that we are looking at?  Where does the role of "science" end and the role of public and private policy begin? 

Well that is the question on my mind...  Personally I think many of us may be experts in small areas, and yet some like to think that makes them an expert in the whole topic.  So when I disagree with you and request sources / proof...  That is why... :-) 

And I promise to continue explaining the rationale for my beliefs and providing sources, so you can see how I got to my belief.  Then please feel to question the rationale or point me to better sources.  Thanks John

Climate Change Update

The VOX Climate Change slides are interesting. They took them from this Nature piece.  This SciDev link forecasts we will be at 1.5C increase by 2030.


The good news is that with Climate Change Deniers in the White House...  NASA continues to maintain their fact based web page.  And so are the NOAA pages.

Climate, RCPs and Forecasts

Jerry is confusing me again... So here we go:

"The IPCC uses four different "Representative Concentration Pathways," (replacing the complex set of "scenarios" i.e. assumptions about what the future will bring) as far as human emissions are concerned. They make assumptions about population, economic growth, energy requirements and production, "carbon intensity" of that energy, etc. LOTS of assumptions, and put them in 4 general categories: RCP 8.5, 6.0, 4.5, and 2.6. [as I understand it, named after the "old" predictions of temperature rise for each] The 100-year warming predicted, based on those RCPs, range from 0.3 to 4.8 degrees C. [You see why I say their predictive value is worthless?] They then have a "standard" computer tool called MAGICC, which quickly calculates the results of any change to basic parameters, rather than run thousands of hours of computer calculations.

Read Lomborg's paper and you find that he used RCP 8.5 (the "business as usual" scenario) and MAGICC to get his answers, the same thing other researchers have done, and achieved the same result-- that Paris doesn't matter because human CO2 is relatively insignificant, as I have shown using very simple math. You can do it with the lower emissions scenarios-- 6.0, etc.-- but of course the impact of adding Paris is even smaller.

You simply have to get to the point where you believe the actual math rather than the hyperventilating politicians with vested interests in keeping this scare going. Even some of them will very quietly admit that Paris "doesn't do much" by itself and that "much more is needed" to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees (an increase many consider beneficial). Why should that be, when the average of the 100-year climate models is now 2.5 degrees and falling (because of better understanding of "climate sensitivity," for one thing), and is still above simple projections of the historical record?" Jerry

Now what one has to remember is that this Lomborg is a Political Science major who has been dubbed dishonest and unqualified.  Here is a description of the RCPs and the graphed results.

Global Warming Revisited

Per Laurie's idea from the G2A Brainstorming Page, let's talk about climate change.  She gave us the following link as a starting point.  MJ 97% of Climate Scientists Can't Be Wrong

My first thought is that their logic is kind of funny.

"Of the roughly 4,000 of those abstracts that expressed some view on the evidence for global warming, more than 97 percent endorsed the consensus that climate change is happening, and it's caused by humans."

Isn't that kind of like saying that:

97% of those who support raising educational funding see high class sizes as the primary cause of the achievement gap?

Now remember.  I actually do believe that burning fuels and releasing a great deal of previously stored energy into our closed system will impact the environment.  However I also believe that the earth and system will adjust accordingly. 

For example, the core temperature may heat to a level such that we experience more large volcanic eruptions???  Which would then release a massive amount of particulate into the atmosphere and likely cool the system???

I mean us humans may not like the Earth's natural correction, however it has been apparently self correcting for a very very long time.  However, I would advise moving away from the low lying areas and the fault lines...  Thoughts?

One last thought, I could really use a little global warming right now.  Putting in the docks, boats and lifts on Saturday and Sunday was very cold and damp...  And now I have a head cold...

Skeptical Science
FOX Cooling
USA Today Sick Science
G2A GW Apr2013
G2A GW Mar2012
G2A EPA Aug2011

Dr Roy Spencer

Here is some information from a catastrophic climate change denier that at least seems based somewhat in science. 

And here is what some catastrophic climate change believers think of his work.

Here is a wikipedia site dedicated to him.

Of course there is the question of his religious beliefs and how that impacts his scientific findings.

"Spencer is a signatory to "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming",^[32][33] which states that "We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history."^[34] "

Thoughts? 

Small Changes and Climate Balance

Over here Jerry is making the same old argument...  The human impact on Earth is small compared to the total system size, therefore humans can not be driving the catastrophic climate changes we are seeing all around us. (ie floods, fires, heat waves, droughts, etc)


So I created a picture to help understand...

The reality is that the human use of carbon based fuels is pretty new to this incredibly balanced world environment we live in. For thousands of years the babies were just sitting there happy as could be.  I mean animals would come and go, the sun would get closer and further, etc.  Then along came humans who started giving the one baby toys...  So of course the balance will start to tip.


Now what I do not know is how Mother Nature will react in order to restore balance and how many of us silly short lived humans will survive it?  Will the babies keep smiling or will they both end up with the critters?

4th National Climate Assessment

FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT

Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States

Pay me now or pay me later. 😎