As Britain told to expect snow for 'next 10 days', how is the rest of the world is coping with this Arctic weather?

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I have plenty of opinions. Your problem is that you're blind and deaf.

John Galt..... give me a break.

As usual. Unoriginal. GIVE ME AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

You think this childish #######-measurement banter you're indulging in is original?

You think that you have the wit to get my back up? You don't.

Shame you can't say the same.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Afew years back these day 2 day weather reports were meaningful and evidence, whats changed?

Meaningful and evidence to whom?

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Last year at this time we had been buried in snow for weeks, this year, barely a trace and gone in a matter of hours. Go figure, weather is a funny thing...

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

It's fcuking cold here in FL. Low 30's overnight and upper 40's for today's high. It's brutally cold, man.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I'll keep posting this for Lone Ranger and the other deniers...

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Naomi Oreskes^*

Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

References and Notes

1. A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
   
2. S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).
   
3. See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
   
4. J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
   
5. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
   
6. American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
   
7. American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
   
8. See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
   
9. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
   
10. <a name="ref10">This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions. 10.1126/science.1103618
    

1. 
   

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

...and the bet is still on that I will buy anyone here a 6 pack of beer if they can prove that the above is NOT factual.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Galt's gallstones

[Ban Hammer 13,349]

It's fcuking cold here in FL. Low 30's overnight and upper 40's for today's high. It's brutally cold, man.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I'll keep posting this for Lone Ranger and the other deniers...

...and the bet is still on that I will buy anyone here a 6 pack of beer if they can prove that the above is NOT factual.

First you need to come up with some facts yourself.

Edited January 4, 2010 by ={Rogue}=

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

As the clock ticks down towards December's historic UN Copenhagen conference on climate change, the frenzied efforts of the warmists to panic us over all that vanishing Arctic and Antarctic ice are degenerating into farce.

That great authority Ban Ki-moon, the UN's Secretary-General, solemnly tells us that the polar ice caps are "melting far faster than was expected just two years ago". Yet the latest satellite information from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (passed on by the Watts Up With That blog) shows that, after the third slowest melt of April Arctic ice in 30 years, the world's polar sea ice is in fact slightly above its average extent for early May since satellite records began in 1979.

:rofl:

Meanwhile, up in the Arctic, after yet another delay for bad weather, the hapless Catlin trio, sponsored by an insurance firm which hopes to make money out of alarm over global warming, continue their painful progress towards the distant North Pole, measuring the ice with an old tape measure and assuring Prince Charles by satellite telephone that it is "thinner than expected".

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

When the trio heard a passing aircraft, which they hoped was bringing much-needed supplies, they little realised it was a DC-3 carrying an international team of scientists, using the latest electro-magnetic induction equipment to discover rather more efficiently that the ice was in fact "twice as thick" as they had expected.

A last symbolic drama was the fate of another three-man expedition aiming to publicise the effects of climate change. Followed by schools across Britain, they were aiming to reach Greenland in a "carbon-free" boat powered only by wind and the sun. Last week, after running into appalling weather, they were rescued by – it had to be – a US oil tanker. I wonder whether the schoolchildren were told.

Edited January 4, 2010 by ={Rogue}=

[SpiritAlight 1]

Ah, let's seeeee....oh, here it is:

Spell to Change the Weather

eye of newt

thirteen lavender leaves

a crow feather

a pinch of ground up silver birch bark

a snowball and some ice from the street

some fur off your cat (just a few hairs, don't go crazy)

Tikal by ES Posthumus

a glass of Malbec

mix ingredients in a cauldron in boiling steamy liquid

cackle

drink wine

play the song (loud!) and dance wildly

BELIEVE!

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Keep the sixpack Steve. maybe it will help ween you from the climate change crack youve been smokin. Your so invested in the great hoax you will never let go.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Did someone just drop a pin?

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

More FACTS!

Though polar bears currently eat seals more than anything else, they also will feast on fish, kelp, caribou, ducks, sea birds, the occasional beluga whale, musk ox and scavenged whale and walrus carcasses.

In addition, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist with Nunavut Territorial government in Canada, pointed out in testimony to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that modest warming may be beneficial to bears since it creates better habitat for seals and would dramatically increase blueberry production, on which bears gorge themselves when available.

Alaska's polar bear population is stable, and Taylor's research shows that the Canadian polar bear population has increased 25 percent from 12,000 to 15,000 during the past decade, with 11 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations stable or increasing in number.

[Ban Hammer 13,349]

I'll keep posting this for Lone Ranger and the other deniers...

...and the bet is still on that I will buy anyone here a 6 pack of beer if they can prove that the above is NOT factual.

link - now where is my beer?