YahooNews.com

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The harmful effects of global warming are being felt “here and now and in your backyard,” a groundbreaking US government report on climate change has warned.

“Climate change is happening now, it is not something that will happen decades or centuries in the future,” Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, one of the lead authors of the report, told AFP.

Climate change, which the report blames largely on human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases, “is under way in the United States and projected to grow,” said the report by the US Global Change Research Program, a grouping of a dozen government agencies and the White House.

The report is the first on climate change since President Barack Obama took office and outlines in plain, non-scientific terms how global warming has resulted in an increase of extreme weather such as the powerful heatwave that swept Europe in 2003, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

Thanks BubbaRay.




  1. MikeN says:

    Well they are flat out wrong on the last part. It does weaken the case, in as much as it was part of the case, and is no longer as likely. They are right in that it doesn’t weaken the case much, since the hockey stick doesn’t say much about greenhouse gases causing warming. That’s why they should focus on that part of the science, and stop trying to bolster it with weak temperature reconstructions. Also, many of the additional studies that they relied on to make the claims of the third paragraph have also been found to be problematic. This was not known at the time of the report, as many of the authors are not as open with their data and methods as they should be. The original hockey stick was only found out when Congress insisted Prof Mann provide his data to the public.

  2. Mr. Fusion says:

    #124, Lyin’ Mike,

    They also found that most of the deniers make up their claims as they go. Instead of refuting any evidence, deniers just claim the data / report / science is bad.

  3. MikeN says:

    I linked several refutations already. They took the same data and methods, and produced a hockey stick that showed temperatures have gotten colder, with better correlation numbers. What does that say about the math? YOu can look through climateaudit.org for other problems.

  4. Mike,

    I’m just curious, why is it that you think blogs are a valid refutation for peer reviewed scientific work?

    Have you tried Google Scholar as a search engine? It might really show you the difference between what is real and what people want to believe because it hurts less.

    Your only peer-reviewed post thus far has stated that global warming is real and that sea level rise will be a meter by 2100, not an insignificant rise by anyone’s standards, though solidly lower than the rise a growing number of other peer reviewed papers forecast.

    This may make it a bit clearer why most estimates for sea level rise are pretty low. It’s simply that they don’t know how to model the rapid melting of Greenland’s ice sheet that is already beginning to be observed. It’s not that the entire sheet will melt within a century, but that no one can accurately model how much will.

    So they ignore the problem completely and don’t report it yet.

    http://tinyurl.com/lgldzh

  5. Sorry MikeN,

    I forgot to post the link to Google Scholar. Here it is. Give it a try. Who knows? You might find better articles to back up your beliefs. Or, you might be convinced by the wealth of real science out there. Either way, it will provide a better read than the blogs.

    http://scholar.google.com/

  6. MikeN says:

    Peer reviewed is better than non peer-reviewed, but it doesn’t mean accurate. Most of the work simply doesn’t get replicated in climate science as has been shown by these various blogs. On top of that, many times the data isn’t even made public. Doesn’t it bother you that it takes an act of Congress to get a Prof to reveal his data thoroughly enough to allow replication, and then when he does so, it fails?

  7. MikeN says:

    While you’re so interested, I’ll give you a few, taking out http to avoid spam filter:

    sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/294/5546/1431b

    sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/278/5341/1257

    nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/abs/nature04121.html

    http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003GL019024.shtml

    http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/myownPapers-d/Soonetal01CR.pdf

  8. #129 – MikeN,

    First, I still reiterate that it did not fail in this case. You might want to find one where it did.

    Second, there were peer reviewed articles back and forth over the hockey stick. That is the beauty of peer review, not that it is perfect, but that the solution is more peer review.

    Blogs do not cut it. I can say anything I want on my blog. It has no credibility at all in and of itself. That’s why I tend to like to post links both here and on my own blog.

    Why on earth should anyone take my word for anything? Or yours? Or some retired meteorologist who doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate any more than the difference between meteorology and climatology?

    So, they make pretty pictures. Who cares? There is no credibility to the data.

  9. MikeN says:

    The blog is more credible in some instances, particularly when they provide you the data and source code, so you can check for yourself. If peer-reviewed journal article doesn’t provide all this, what good is it? How would the error ever be noticed?

  10. sac says:

    #132, Lyin’ Mike,

    If peer-reviewed journal article doesn’t provide all this, what good is it? How would the error ever be noticed?

    Very simple. The journal would decline to publish it then.

    To be peer reviewed means several peers (scientists in the same or a similar field) review the paper.

    They search it for obvious errors and completeness. Some may even try replicating the paper but that is usually not a requirement. The math is reviewed for errors. Facts are reviewed for completeness. Sources are reviewed for correctness.

    If the paper is deficient or missing something, it is sent back to the author(s) for correction or explanation.

    The reviewers do not pass judgment on the paper; that is not their job. They are only looking to see if the paper passes specific standards. It is up to the scientists in the field to discuss, debate, and test the paper after publication.

    Not every paper that passes the reviewers is published. Most journals have more submissions then they are capable of publishing. Sometimes, a journal might submit the paper to a sister journal for publication.

    It is not unusual for a paper to still be published with errors. The errors are found out and the paper’s thesis is adjusted as required. This is science correcting itself as more information becomes available.

    If a scientist ever tried to publish a paper and failed to provide the requisite data and methods used to obtain the result, it would not be published and probably rejected outright. Since most proprietary research does contain secrets, they rarely are published by serious journals.

  11. MikeN says:

    False. The original hockey stick paper was published with a method description that the author himself later admitted was wrong(when an outside blogger tested it). How could publication standards have required thorough review and testing, when it was wrong?
    The author then wouldn’t provide the full data until Congress insisted.

    If you were really interested in this, you can look thru climateaudit.org for descriptions of various peer-reviewed papers where the authors will not provide the data and methods.

  12. MikeN says:

    sac, it would be great if the journals operated in that way.

    AN interesting thing about the hockey stick, is that the NAS panel that reviewed it and supposedly OKed it, they accepted every criticism issued by the guys at ClimateAudit.org.

    For example, take this comment made by one of the authors of the hockey stick at realclimate.org

    Even without technical training or a statistical background, you should have an adequate basis for discerning which of the two parties is likely wrong here. Only one of the parties involved has (1) had their claims fail scientific peer-review, (2) produced a reconstruction that is completely at odds with all other existing estimates (note that there is no sign of the anomalous 15th century warmth claimed by MM in any of the roughly dozen other model and proxy-based estimates shown here), and (3) been established to have made egregious elementary errors in other published work that render the work thoroughly invalid. These observations would seem quite telling. -mike]

    But the NAS Panel report then said:
    McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction. To see how this can happen, suppose that instead of proxy climate data, one simply used a random sample of autocorrelated time series that did not contain a coherent signal. If these simulated proxies are standardized as anomalies with respect to a calibration period and used to form principal components, the first component tends to exhibit a trend, even though the proxies themselves have no common trend. Essentially, the first component tends to capture those proxies that, by chance, show different values between the calibration period and the remainder of the data. If this component is used by itself or in conjunction with a small number of unaffected components to perform reconstruction, the resulting temperature reconstruction may exhibit a trend, even though the individual proxies do not. Figure 9-2 shows the result of a simple simulation along the lines of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (the computer code appears in Appendix B). In each simulation, 50 autocorrelated time series of length 600 were constructed, with no coherent signal. Each was centered at the mean of its last 100 values, and the first principal component was found. The figure shows the first components from five such simulations overlaid. Principal components have an arbitrary sign, which was chosen here to make the last 100 values higher on average than the remainder.(86-87)

    Read the report to look at the charts, but they agreed that Mann used a faulty method that would create hockey stick graphs out of random data. Bloggers 1, Peer-Reviewers 0

  13. sac says:

    #135, Mike

    If you

    1) told us where and posted a link to these “quotes” you are using, we could assess them.

    2) use quotation marks or italics to show what is actually being quoted so we can follow along.

    3) quoted something relevant

    it would assist your comments. Just posting goobly gook like that with nothing to put it in context is silly.

    This is not a science class. If it was you would fail. Nor is it a game of bullshit. You are just too unconvincing. You are just a fraud trying to convince others of something you have no concept of.

    Bloggers-0, Peer Review-1

  14. Patrick says:

    #136 – At the end of the day, real world temps haven’t been up trending for years. That ends the argument.

  15. MikeN says:

    The NAS Panel report is available to be read by the public, as is the companion Wegman report, which tends to get ignored by the AGW cheerleaders in the media. Both concluded that Prof Mann’s methods were flawed and agreed with the critics.

  16. MikeN says:

    Here is the Wegman Report,

    http://tinyurl.com/mhylwt

    and here is the NAS Panel report

    http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20060622.html

    Read through them, and you’ll see that on methodology they agree the hockey stick paper is fatally flawed.

    If you don’t wish to read them, and would just like to rely on media reports f what’s in them, that’s up to you.

  17. Mr. Fusion says:

    #139, Lyin’ Mike,

    I checked out your link for the National Acadamies and this is all there is.

    High Confidence in Surface Temp Reconstructions Since A.D. 1600
    Print This

    June 22 — There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other “proxies” to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then.

    Skimming Wegman’s report, it appears that his methods are well presented. Your link did not have any criticism of Wegman or the report.

    Sorry, you lose again.

    Bloggers – 0, Peer Review – 2

  18. #137 – PatDick,

    Cite a source instead of continually blowing out your ass and people might one day take you seriously.

    Still looks like it’s going up to me … in fact … it looks a bit like … dare I say it … a hockey stick.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record

  19. #139 – MikeN,

    From the overview from your own NAS Panel Report link:

    There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other “proxies” to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then.

    So, the most recent 400 years was accurate. The 600 years before that had a bit lower confidence. The hockey stick graph was only 1,000 years, so the last portion about very little confidence has nothing to do with the hockey stick at all.

    Here’s a good overview of the controversy on this one out of a great many peer reviewed publications on the subject.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

    Note the final paragraph.

    In a paper on 9 September 2008, Mann and colleagues published an updated reconstruction of Earth surface temperature for the past two millennia. This reconstruction used a more diverse dataset that was significantly larger than the original tree-ring study. Similarly to the original study, this work found that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years, and that this result is robust to the inclusion or exclusion of the tree-ring dataset.

    So, after all the controversy, the improved dataset still says the same thing as the original statement a decade ago.

    Vindicated.

    Here’s the full text of the 2008 article.

    http://tinyurl.com/lxyh3g

    Hey … the graph … still looks just like … a hockey stick!!

  20. Moody Loner says:

    What “Al Gore Inc.” is preaching is nothing more than a scary story based around a cyclic event which has been coming around time & again since the big-bang. The fact is that ice will melt, seas will rise, food will become scarce and some species will die out /some may not of course.
    Exactly the same model as the dinosaurs, ice-age…hell, even Pompei. Natural disasters have occurred throughout time, why is this so different?

    The only real disaster here is that oil/gas/coal companies are a static target and the science community are shooting with both barrels to create a lot of fervor and hike up the research funding – scientists gotta’ eat dude…!

    I don’t dispute that the environment is being polluted but so what? It’s inevitable that the human race implodes and kills itself due to it’s collective aggressive nature, what does the earth care. The planet will rejuvenate itself once the infrastructure is given time to naturally.

    The only real positive, effective and sustainable way to cut down pollution of the planets’ ecosystem is to restrict the growth of the populous! Stop the uneducated, young, elderly, poor, middle-class, wealthy, religious and stupid classes of society having children at will! Bring in enforced abortion where countries cannot sustain the growth of it’s population – in every nation. Cut the amount of unnecessary births which result in over population and a massive drain on the resources available. Lower the numbers overall.

    People are the problem not the technology – just halt the rabbit like spread of the human race instead of flying all over the world and pontificating, over-taxing companies or berating corporations that are only doing what’s natural to companies – making money!

    To effect the message of global decay, stop producing the damaging element to the environment – people, not CO2!!

  21. 1101doc says:

    Comments like the one above scare me silly. Human rights are at stake here. Who decides- for whom?

    The question is not whether the global climate is changing- it is always changing. The real question is not even whether there is anything that can be done about our ability to thrive in the face of those changes. No.

    The essential question is whether we will freely abandon our human rights to big and bigger government over this or any other issue.

    If an appropriate response to “climate change’ cannot be found that also insures basic human rights and “liberty for all,” then, yes. I say “Do Nothing!”

    What has made America great is our insistence that all individuals be free to pursue “happiness” as they see it. Granting control to government over the very air I breathe is out of the question.

    I will not have anyone tell me how much to CO2 to exhale, how many children to have, when (or if) my parents should “go quietly for the greater good,” where I must live, what I must eat (or not eat) or anything else of the kind!

    “Climate Cjhange/Global Warming” is shaping up to be little more that a massive grab for political power in the name of the environment. Little attention is being given to real ecological issues, and much to wealth distribution and governmental control over the lives of individuals.

    I say- Resist Tyranny in every guise. Whether the Devil appears as a saint or a sinner- he’s still the Devil.


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