I SELDOM RESPOND TO COMMENTARY UPON MY COLUMNS. However, given the great significance of this issue, I feel that an exception, as follows, is both justified and crucial.
“There is simply no direct evidence that climate change is a man made phenomenum,” writes “Matter.” “No provable theory exists! Pure speculation and erroneous hypothesis based on provably false models.” (Italics mine)
From “JLB”: “The fact is that the projections are based on modeling not data and the data are proving the modeling is false or at best grossly inaccurate. That fact is well known and has been acknowledged by all parties on both sides (italics mine) yet it seems to have no effect on the likes of Mr. Page.”
Whereupon he adds: “Climate Change — A solution looking for a problem for no other purpose than profit. (Italics mine.) People just aren’t buying it. Move on!” (In short, a blatant scam!)
Moving on past this problem is not easy for me, however, perhaps because defending real world science against phantasy appears a personal responsibility.
And, more pointedly, because those opening quoted assertions concerning climate change have no relationship to any research, study, data, fact or reality of which I (or anyone connected to reality) could be aware. I know of no such agreement by “all parties” concerning a “reality” that warming doesn’t exist, and I find that assertion not merely remarkable but dramatically bizarre.
Even more bizarre, given the vast body of research on this issue, is the notion that the central motivation involved for the conclusions of the innumerable scientists who have studied this is “profit”! And so much for the canons of science!
I do know and have quoted in my columns a very large number of scientific studies and experts concerning the crucial nature of this problem, and I have noted that these were only a tiny fractional selection from the vast scientific literature that exists on this enormous problem. To miss that is a bit like walking past Mount Everest and failing to notice the existence of a bump in the terrain.
Regardless, the study continues, grows and continues to confirm and enlarge upon the grave crisis we face.
For one dramatic example, as reported Oct. 6 by Common Dreams: “Rate of Ocean Warming Vastly Underestimated: Study,” by Nadia Prupis:
“The ocean is getting warmer at a rate that far outpaces previous estimates, a new study published Sunday has discovered.
“Since 1970, the top 700 meters (roughly 2,296 feet) of the ocean have been heating up 24 to 55 percent faster than scientists have been estimating, the report, published in Nature Climate Change, found — a massive miscalculation that was caused by ‘poor sampling of the Southern Hemisphere, and limitations of the analysis methods.’
“‘It’s likely that due to the poor observational coverage, we just haven’t been able to say definitively what the long-term rate of Southern Hemisphere ocean warming has been,’ the study’s lead author, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) oceanographer Dr. Paul Durack, told the BBC. ‘It’s a really pressing problem — we’re trying as hard as we can, as scientists, to provide the best information from the limited observations we have.’
“Ocean heat storage accounts for more than 90 percent of the Earth’s excess heat caused by climate change, LLNL said. Rising temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere are a result of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, as the oceans heat up, the world’s two largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting at the fastest rates ever recorded — enough to change the planet’s gravitational pull.
“‘The thing that was surprising to me was the magnitude of this underestimation,’ Durack told Science Magazine. The findings mean the planet’s sensitivity to carbon buildup may also have been underestimated throughout the same time period, he added.
“When the study’s authors readjusted the estimates to meet more accurate models, they saw ‘large increases’ to the results — which have ‘important implications for sea level, the planetary energy budget and climate sensitivity assessments,’ they said.
“The study’s publication comes soon after the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that August 2014 was the warmest August on record for the planet, a spike that was driven largely by historically warm oceans.” (Italics mine.)
“‘It is time to close the deep-ocean measurement gap and reduce the uncertainties in global planetary energy and sea-level budgets,’ said NOAA’s Dr. Gregory Johnson and Dr. John Lyman, who contributed to the report.
“Nature Climate Change also released a second report that looked at temperatures in the deep ocean — levels below the top 700 meters examined in the first study — but found that information on that portion was ‘not detectable’ between 2005 and 2013. But with new revelations of ‘estimated uncertainties’ in the upper levels, the study concluded, the net warming of the ocean caused an ‘energy imbalance’ for the planet during that same time period.
“The new findings follow another recent report by the American Geophysical Union, which found that 30 percent of the ocean warming over the past decade has occurred in the ocean’s deeper levels.”
As ThinkProgress notes:
“This warming, along with the acidification of the oceans that also comes along with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, is causing serious problems for sea life. Warmer waters can bleach coral, causing them to be more vulnerable to death. And a study published this week found that it will likely take fish several generations to begin to cope with rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean.
“‘Indeed, recent warming rates of the waters below 700 meters appear to be unprecedented,’ the American Geophysical Union wrote in its report.
“The Southern Hemisphere oceans make up 60 percent of the world’s oceans.”
Finally, I will note again that the appearance of an “equal” body of research questioning the reality of climate change has been far more a function of the tendency of media executives, themselves unsophisticated about scientific realities, to reach for “balance.” Often this is fed by dramatic unscientific assertions and has resulted in greater coverage of contra warming views from far less scientifically based sources than could possibly be justified by any real-world realities. By some measures this coverage has overshadowed those realities.
And so it goes in that brute-hard real world not dominated by the urgent demands for a “reality” that fits the phantasy world of the current American political right. The consequences of responding to those demands could be catastrophic.
Jerome Page is a Benicia resident.
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If you look at the last paragraph from this article below, you will see further references to the concept of data modeling and not factual recorded data. This method has been widely acknowledged as the method to their madness. The problem is the data models are wrong. It’s actually pretty simple math to figure out, that is if you pull your head out of the “gloom and doom sand”!
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A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by 2013” that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off… by 920,000 square miles.
In his Dec. 10, 2007 “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.
Gore said that on Sept. 21, 2007, “scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar icecap is, in their words, ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week warns that it could happen in as little as seven years, seven years from now.”
Maslowski told members of the American Geophysical Union in 2007 that the Arctic’s summer ice could completely disappear within the decade. “If anything,” he said, “our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer… is already too conservative.”
The former vice president also warned that rising temperatures were “a planetary emergency and a threat to the survival of our civilization.”
However, instead of completely melting away, the polar icecap is at now at its highest level for this time of year since 2006.
Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet, more than half the size of Europe, despite “realistic” predictions by climate scientists six years ago that the North Pole would be completely melted by now.
Instead of shrinking, the NASA photographs clearly show that the Arctic ice sheet is much larger than it was at the same time last year. The thick layer of summer ice, which currently stretches from Canada to Russia, is preventing ships from using the North-West Passage.
A Dec. 12, 2007 BBC article quoted Professor Maslowski and his team of climate researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. explaining how they used “a high-resolution regional [computer] model for the Arctic Ocean and sea ice forced with realistic atmospheric data” to make their predictions.
JLB, please explain the 35,000 walruses crowding shorelines of NW Alaska due to the absence of the sea-ice platforms they normally rely on for resting and calving places near their food sources.
Please wake up? Quit fighting Al Gore and deal with reality. So he and others have not been precisely accurate in their forecasts? So what! There is more to being correct than precision.
Good work, again, Mr. Page. Never mind the die-hard hollow fellows, heads filled with trash-data and insistent denial. Nothing can convince them but ocean waves lapping at their necks.
35,000 walruses crowding shorelines of NW Alaska due to the absence of the sea-ice platforms
Just thinking out loud here; I wonder if the fact that this occurred at the end of summer might have anything to do with the ice melting?
You are correct Dennis. You do have a very cooling sense about you. Thanks.
Quotes from the studies in Mr. Page’s piece are in italics:
“The ocean is getting warmer at a rate that far outpaces previous estimates So the previous estimates were wrong. Guess we will just give them a mulligan on that one.
found — a massive miscalculation But they are sure they are right this time.
caused by ‘poor sampling Well at least they know how they mucked it up before.
due to the poor observational coverage Another mulligan?
we just haven’t been able to say definitively… we’re trying as hard as we can…to provide the best information from the limited observations we have.’ Well thank goodness they are at least ‘trying hard’.
“‘The thing that was surprising to me was the magnitude of this underestimation…The findings mean the planet’s sensitivity to carbon buildup may also have been underestimated… Thank goodness for mulligans.
the study’s authors readjusted the estimates to meet more accurate models So the old models were wrong.
I thought that 97% of the scientists all agreed that all this was “settled”.
But as we learn more and more about this we see that mistakes were made, calculations were wrong and we are now supposed to accept that they have it right this time.
Beyond JLB–
Another look/perspective at the demonization of Al Gore by the climate change denial crowd for the wider community and our appointed and elected leaders to ponder…
“Note: the vilification of Al Gore is best understood in the context of personalisation. When opponents attack something abstract – like science – the public may not associate with the argument. By giving a name and a face and a set of behavioural characteristics – being a rich politician, for example – it is easy to create a fictional enemy through inference and association. Al Gore is a successful politician who presented a film, his training and experience suitable to the task. To invoke Gore is a way to obfuscate about climate science, for which Gore has neither responsibility, claim nor blame.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors.htm
Will posted:the vilification of Al Gore is best understood in the context of personalization
LOL
Thanks for the laugh Will.
The vilification of Gore is more easily understood from the basis that those who said he was : A Liar, a hypocrite, a profiteer, wrong on so many points of his power point show, undeserving of the Academy Award, and underserving of the Noble Prize, were all correct.
Come on Will, admit that you were wrong, it is not that hard.
Look at me: I voted for Jimmy Carter, boy was I wrong on that one!
Beyond the the anti-intellectual,anti-science, climate change denial and Good Neighbor crowd—
Another nice summation by Mr. Page.
Below more information for the community about petro-state California for our appointed and elected representatives to seriously consider…
“Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater”
“After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.”
“It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.”
“The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, reveals that nearly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into central California aquifers and that half of the water samples collected at the 8 water supply wells tested near the injection sites have high levels of dangerous chemicals such as arsenic, a known carcinogen that can also weaken the human immune system, and thallium, a toxin used in rat poison.”
“Fracking has been accused of exacerbating California’s epic state-wide drought, but the Central Valley region, which has some of the worst air and water pollution in the state, has borne a disproportionate amount of the impacts from oil companies’ increasing use of the controversial oil extraction technique.”
“News of billions of gallons of fracking wastewater contaminating protected aquifers relied on by residents of the Central Valley for drinking water could not have come at a worse time.”
“Adding insult to injury, fracking is a water-intensive process, using as much as 140,000 to 150,000 gallons per frack job every day, permanently removing it from the water cycle.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater
Mr. Page was a believer in the CODA car I would expect.
Mr. Page stated:I know of no such agreement by “all parties” concerning a “reality” that warming doesn’t exist, — Nor do I. I am not sure who has said that “global warming doesn’t exist” what is at the heart of the dispute is causation of climactic variations.
Climactic — ha!