TheHILL.com:
President Obama angrily blasted climate change skeptics during his energy policy speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, saying he lacked “patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real.”
“We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society,” Obama said. “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”
Earlier in his remarks, Obama said the “overwhelming judgement of science, of chemistry, of physics, and millions of measurements” put “to rest” questions about pollution affecting the environment.
“The planet is warming. Human activity is contributing to it,” Obama said.“We know that the costs of these events can be measured in lost lives and lost livelihoods.”
The president noted that the 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come within the last 15 years, and said that rising temperatures were increasing the severity and impact of storms.
He noted that rising tide levels in New York increased the impact of Hurricane Sandy, while record temperatures killed crops and increased food prices in the Midwest.
“In a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by the warming planet,” Obama said.
“Those who are feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it — they’re busy dealing with it.”
There you have it. It just seems obvious to me. The question now becomes, since all science is basically inductive, can you prove it isn’t happening? Actually, the nay-sayers cause my eyes to glaze over. I just haven’t figured out why we aren’t all on the same side of this. Don’t we all want a cleaner earth? Don’t we all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink?
Did Obama say something? I could not hear above the laughter and ridicule from across the world. The US extradition request for Snowden to Hong Kong was ignored. Obama issued a clumsy warning on Snowden to Russia which yielded him a poke in the eye from Putin. Obama’s grand pronouncement on nukes in Berlin before a “crowd” of 4000 was met with …. a collective yawn. Obama has shriveled before our eyes into a very small man on the world stage.
And so it is with climate change. Obama’s announcement, like all his announcements, ignored the elephant in the room, which is the pause in warming that has lasted for more than 15 years. No one can explain it or predict how long it will last. Will it continue on for 5 years, 50 years, or even 500 years? And more importantly, if the pause turns out to be natural variability, how do we know that the strong warming of the 90’s was not natural variability? Nobody is going to accept any meaningful government programs on climate until these questions are answered satisfactorily. Meanwhile, the shriveling of Obama continues ….
Kelly – what is your perspective on the rise in ocean temperature and the melting of the arctic caps? The earth has two heat sinks – the colder one is melting, and the warmer one is getting warmer – which both affect the air temperature. Sea levels are rising – that is a measurable fact.
Yeah, and the oceans aren’t warming and acidifying, and the polar ice isn’t melting at a record pace, and CO2 isn’t a proven greenhouse gas, and ocean coral reefs aren’t dying, and animal populations aren’t moving in response to warming. In fact, everything is fine and we really need to get rid of those ridiculous electric cars and solar panels and windmills and fuel-economy standards and anything else that interferes with our God-given right to burn oil and coal.
It takes a very careful parsing of the data to produce the “pause” in warming (see link below), but it’s true that scientists haven’t really been able to “explain” it yet. What they do know is that it isn’t a pause but a slowdown- the warming trend has continued for decades and is still underway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make-of-a-climate-change-plateau.html?_r=0
Obama has really disgusted me here. Even moreso than he had to date. He has no potential to do anything real, so he’s steering his party towards this false narrative of ‘saving the world” through less snergy consumption.
The narrative of CO2 being a primary cause for (observed short-term) warming has been relatively debunked in recent years. The stuff just doesn’t trap heat as much as had been thought, especially over the oceans. Measurements back this up. It seems pretty clear that while the earth may be warming, our pollution is not the primary cause. In point of fact we’re largely at the mercy of celestial forces which we can’t control (orbit irregularities and solar output cycles).
But let’s say CO2 is a large factor. Would it make more sense to try to get everyone to develop their nations less, to “slow down” the pace of human development? Or to focus on removing CO2 from the atmosphere? Which is something we can do – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_removal . Does it make more sense to try to be Jimmy Carter on an international scale, to fight against human nature and hector everyone to pay more money to live in less comfort, or to work on technologies that could really prolong life on this planet and actually enable human development and life?
It seems obvious to me that the answer is, the latter. However, those who want to use “global warming” as a call for “social justice” and less pollution already have their narrative in place, and aren’t deviating from it.
Once again, Obama is leading his followers NOWHERE. He is not dealing with real issues, instead he is creating politically viable talking points. Fiddling while Rome burns. He hasn’t done anything to reduce health care cost in America (he bailed out on that quickly), or to reduce wage disparity, or to reform our “too big to fail” financial industries that manufacture debt. he doesn’t attack real problems. he’s the opposite of a leader – he’s a demogogue. A kinder, gentler demogogue.
History’s going to show that this guy hemmed and hawed and didn’t get us any closer to a solution on any of our reeal issues. It’s a red herring to blame Congress I think – one partry is forever trying to stymy the other. Even if you can’t get a bill passed in any interval of time you have a responsibility to lead public debate and to frame issues realistically. This guy can’t lead.
The knock on liberals, as expressed by conservatives, is that they craft solutions that are in denial of human nature, and therefore can’t work well. This can be seen here, on a grand scale.
Carbon dioxide can be broken down and eliminated, There’s just no poilitical upside yet to talking about this. Just as there’s no political upside to enforcing immigration laws and increasing wages in America, and no political upside to keeping banks from squandering money. Because we keep following pied pipers like Obama, and Bush before him – settling for these two parties and getting drawn into their bull**** narratives – issues that could easily be attacked are not.
To put the Climatologist-in-Chief’s speech in perspective with actual statistics on climate occurrences.
http://www.qando.net/?p=15373
The irony of you calling the president the climatologist-in-chief. While you mock him for his views, you feel free to give yours. Are you a climatologist?
Wow! CO2 can easily be broken down and eliminated! Who knew!! Somebody tell all the climate scientists!!!
And tell our Demogogue-In-Chief, also.
What exactly has the Prez suggested that you find so offensive? What plans chap you?
@Moon-howler
I’m not planning on destroying our energy industry like he is. I’m not setting policy due to my beliefs. Since HE is…and he’s making these pronouncements about the “flat earth society” then he is setting himself to be the climatologist in chief.
What plans? Oh…his plan to make energy costs skyrocket and restrict the coal industry and coal fired energy.
How so, Cargo. Please provide details.
I heard nothing that I thought would make energy costs skyrocket.
The coal industry is dirty. At what point to we start to phase it out?
It’s not only dirty, it produces disease and kills off those who are employeed mining it.
i think the Pres’s plans call for phasing things out and phasing things in…over a period of time.
I am curious why you are so protective of the coal industry?
Moon, what are you thinking? We need to EXPAND our dirtiest coal plants and NEVER require them to use 20th century technology, let alone 21st century. Why would we address the biggest source of CO2?
Obama is operating only on HIS beliefs, not the 98% of climate scientists who agree that the climate is warming, that man is responsible, and that coal-fired power plants account for over 30% of the total CO2 output.
It’s all part of the Kenyan Muslim Obama’s plan to destroy America and hand it over to the UN, don’t you understand that? Wake up!!
Totally silly me! Something like 40% of all power plants fueled by coal. There are no regs at all on how much pollution we can dump out of those things.
Bring us more strip mining! Send more men down into those mines with 100 safety violations a week. We haven’t had a good mining disaster in weeks.
Middleman, am I learning? I want my A+!!!!
@middleman
I have been busy at work — no time to participate in this discussion.
Anyway the pause is recognized in a recent article in Nature, one of the premier scientific journals. It’s onset is thought to be due to greater energy uptake by the ocean. It is not known why the ocean uptake increased or how the pause has been maintained for so long. Despite that, the heat content of the upper ocean has remained steady, so sea surface temperature has been steady as well.
The point is that there are incredibly complicated processes that no one understands, and so it is premature to imagine that anything that the incredible shrinking president has proposed would do any good. The pause suggests that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide might be much lower than modeled. And even if we could agree on the right course of action, it would fail unless the Chinese were persuaded to go along. And we know how much (how little!) influence the president has on the world stage right now.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n7/pdf/nclimate1863.pdf
“The pause suggests that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide might be much lower than modeled.”
And a variety of independent m,easurements and experiments have also lead to an understanding that the effect of CO2 on trapping heat is less than had been believed. Unfortunately, the argument is so politicized that no one is interested in objective science at this point.
How about common sense? What does that tell us?
Hi Kelly, welcome back!
Science is clearly on the president’s side. This is the most important sentence from your linked article:
“The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.”
What he has proposed WILL have an effect, and it all he can do as long as congress stays locked in big coal and oil’s embrace. We need to show leadership- since when does America have to wait for the Chinese in order to do the right thing?
@middleman
I am not sure that a single statement by a climate modeler qualifies as settled science. The climate modeling community is famous for boasting about accuracy, despite getting the temperature trend wrong. After they get it wrong, they perform retrospective runs that tune the model for some new process and then proclaim the answer to be correct, right up until it is shown to be wrong again. It would be far more believable if it were NOT retrospective.
“I am not sure that a single statement by a climate modeler qualifies as settled science.”
DENIER! 😉
It must be difficult for the deniers on here to write anything when they must have their heads where the sun doesn’t shine. How can one work like that?
Kelly, I think this “settled science” concept is what misleads people. Science is ever-changing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t act on the information you have now.
The climate scientists have been proven to be right on the predicted outcomes of warming. The sea level rise, the acidification of the oceans, the coral bleaching, the polar ice melting, the animal populations moving, the plant habitat changing were all predicted years ago. It is proven that CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat, and that CO2 stays around a long time up there. And that man has added consderably to the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Do the scientists “know” everything- no they don’t. Will accepted science change over time? Sure, but that doesn’t mean you throw out the overwhelming evidence of science and do nothing to address a problem that will have severe effects if left unchecked. This is a national security issue in addition to being a humanitarian one (the poorest peoples will be hurt the worst, as usual).
We address it now or be overwhelmed by it later. It’s our choice…
This is the key point of disagreement. Climate models have not successfully predicted any of these things before the fact. There is a big difference between predicting and reproducing. The earlier simulations predicted much more warming and melting than we have seen to date.
No one seriously questions that CO2 is a greenhouse gas–it traps radiation, but does so relatively weakly. In order to get strong warming, the modest warming caused by CO2 must induce changes in water vapor and clouds that create even more warming. The observations do not bear this out so far.
It is true that current temperatures are warmer than the 100-year average. However, multi-decadal fluctuations and oscillations can explain the trend just as well as greenhouse-gas warming.
Kelly, the facts simply don’t support your position. It’s easy to verify that scientists predicted these outcomes from global warming. The predictions actually generally under reported sea level rise and ice melt, which are ahead of schedule. Again, easy to verify.
All that’s left to argue now is if we try to mitigate the future even more extreme effects, or if we just abdicate all responsibility and hope for the best. It’s up to us how we’re treated by historians on how we dealt with one of the most important issues of our time.
@middleman
If it’s so easy to verify, then do it. You have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Current temperatures are significantly lower than they should have been if the climate models are correct. Consider this: Here is a paper ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1651/abstract) showing that state-of-the-art climate models over-predicted the tropical temperature trend between 1979 and 2004 by 100-300% compared to satellite data and balloon soundings.
A key piece of the argument that the government must do something immediately is the assertion that the recent warming is unprecedented, and can therefore only be explained by CO2-induced warming. A recent analysis of regional climate based on tree-ring data ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113001406) basically refutes the earlier tree-ring studies of Michael Mann which suppressed the Medieval Warm Period, but showed a very large temperature trend over the last 50 years.
If you are so inclined to examine the data, the money plot is Fig 13 in Briffa et al (2013; the linked article). The Medieval Warm Period now appears right where it should, which therefore indicates that the current warming is NOT unprecedented. There also appears to be a big jump in temperature (as deduced from tree-ring data) between 1890 and 1920. After that, one would be hard pressed to find much of a trend.
The sad part is that the President uses hyperbole like “flat earth society” while getting the science wrong. This says it best: http://www.redstate.com/2013/06/30/our-president-needs-a-science-lesson/
“This plan will cut the dangerous carbon pollution that contributes to climate change. For years, groups like the American Lung Association have warned us that carbon pollution threatens our health and the air our children breathe. We limit the mercury, sulfur, and arsenic in our air and water, but today, there are no federal limits on the amount of carbon pollution that power plants can pump into the air. That’s not safe. So we’ll work with states and businesses to set new standards that put an end to this limitless dumping of carbon.”
The problem is not “carbon”, it’s carbon dioxide, CO2.
Unlike mercury, sulfur and arsenic, carbon dioxide is not toxic. EPA wants to regulate it because it is a greenhouse gas.
Carbon dioxide is necessary for photosynthesis. It is an input in green plant respiration; oxygen is an output. Higher CO2 concentrations stimulate plant growth.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at current levels around 400 ppm (0.04% concentration) cannot “threaten our health and the air our children breathe.”
The carbon dioxide concentration of the air we exhale is 4 to 5.3%, over 100 times the concentration in the air we inhale.
The American Lung Association’s position (pdf link) supports the EPA’s stricter carbon dioxide emission standards because of Global Warming, not because of concerns over toxicity or health-damaging air quality. They think Global Warming will lead to increased levels of smog and ozone.
And it’s the Climate Change community who accuse skeptics of being anti-science?
Kelly, I was responding to your statement: “This is the key point of disagreement. Climate models have not successfully predicted any of these things before the fact.” The facts, independent of my opinion, don’t support that statement. They did predict all the things I listed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/28/hey-ya-mal-mcintyre-was-right-cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/#more-88959
Apparently a key “analysis” which was the basis for a lot of the predictions…is wrong.
And no…the models have not predicted these things…. unless you consider blaming all weather conditions, including contradictory conditions, to be successful. We’ve reached the “tipping point” of 400 ppb and yet…. the temperature is nowhere near the predicted levels.
Cargo, here’s the documentation of some of the predictions from 1981 that came true: http://www.universetoday.com/94468/1981-climate-change-predictions-were-eerily-accurate/
@middleman
These results are not based on a true simulation of climate as we think of it today. These were from a very simple energy-balance model that calculates a single “equilibrium” temperature without explicitly predicting clouds, water vapor, ocean, or land processes. It is basically a statistical parameter fit.
Hansen famously presented one of the first true climate predictions ( http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf) to Congress in 1988. Current temperatures are cooler than those from Hansen’s most optimistic scenario in which drastic reductions in CO2 were to have begun in 1990. In his business-as-usual scenario, the model predicted temperatures increases which are now ~100% larger than observed. See the plots in the link below.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ordinary-eyeball-how-did-hansens-predictions-do/
Kelly, we seem to be talking past one another. I understand and have acknowledged that the figures for average temperature rise are less than predicted for a certain period, even though most of the hottest years on record are in the past ten years.
Again, what I’m saying is that sea level rise, the acidification of the oceans, coral bleaching, the polar ice melting, the animal populations moving, the plant habitat changing were all predicted years ago. You said: “This is the key point of disagreement. Climate models have not successfully predicted any of these things before the fact.” The link I sent documented some of the predictions.
If you don’t think global warming is happening and had anything to do with these things, what caused them?
Kelly, we seem to be talking past one another. I understand and have acknowledged that the figures for average temperature rise are less than predicted for a certain period, even though most of the hottest years on record are in the past ten years.
Again, what I’m saying is that sea level rise, the acidification of the oceans, coral bleaching, the polar ice melting, the animal populations moving, the plant habitat changing were all predicted years ago. You said: “This is the key point of disagreement. Climate models have not successfully predicted any of these things before the fact.” The link I sent documented some of the predictions.
If you don’t think global warming is happening and had anything to do with these things, what caused them?