+Philip Plait is a rock star when it comes to communicating facts about science, but G+ architect +Yonatan Zunger's comments in his forward of Phil's post are worth reading as well:
https://plus.google.com/103389452828130864950/posts/Te7SP28U1W1
Reshared post from +Philip Plait
Global warming: New study shows massive ice loss at both poles
Bad global warming news: A new international study done by 47 researchers from more than two dozen facilities has the most accurate measurements of polar ice yet, and shows that we're losing ice from both the north and south poles at an ever-increasing rate. Overall loss is 3x faster than it was in the 1990s, and Greenland alone is losing ice at a rate 5x faster. The West Antarctic ice sheet, a vast reservoir of ice, is losing a staggering 65 billion tons of ice per year.
Climate change deniers can kiss their ice goodbye.
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Comments
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I'm not suprised, but sad
The deniers I know will cherry pick some contrary data bit & hang their whole argument on it.
+Jeff Sullivan don't you know that there's NO SUCH THING as "global warming" ??? C'mon maaan, it's a complete myth fabricated by the "bleeding heart liberals" & those pathetic "treehuggers" based on "junk science", not reality !!!
lmao … I can assure you I am only kidding but it's quite unfortunate that many people actually feel that way.
I can't see why there are still people that don't believe this is happening. There's still time to correct it, but we have to escalate our efforts.
People hear what they want to hear +Doug Thompson, especially when "skeptical" propaganda is broadcast on "news" channels…
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University looked at that blatant mismatch between reality and what was reported to the public, and presented the following findings:
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/assets/pdf/Nieman%20Reports/ProfCorner/NR05W_Global_Warming.pdf
Disinformation, Financial Pressures, and Misplaced Balance
A reporter describes the systemic forces that work against the story of climate change being accurately told.
By Ross Gelbspan
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100591
Global Warming: What’s Known vs. What’s Told
‘Americans could be forgiven for not knowing how uncontroversial this issue is among the vast majority of scientists.’
By Sandy Tolan and Alexandra Berzon
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100596
Knowing Uncertainty for What It Is
In reporting on the science of global warming, journalists contend with powerful, well-funded forces using strategies created by tobacco companies.
By David Michaels
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/topics.aspx?id=100171
If people dig a little deeper into the scientific basis for one side vs. the other, we've all seen arguments criticizing this study or that study, but the basic conclusion of climate science that the earth is warming overall doesn't rely on any one scientific study. At a high level, there are at least 10 lines of evidence, from 47 independent data sets. The 10 indicators are:
– Land surface air temperature as measured by weather stations. You know all those skeptic arguments about how the temperature record is biased by the urban heat island effect, badly-sited weather stations, dropped stations, and so on? This is the only indicator which suffers from all those problems. So if you’re arguing with somebody who tries to frame the discussion as being about land surface air temperature, just remind them about the other nine indicators.
– Sea surface temperature. As with land temperatures, the longest record goes back to 1850 and the last decade is warmest.
– Air temperature over the oceans.
– Lower troposphere temperature as measured by satellites for around 50 years. By any of these measures, the 2000s was the warmest decade and each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the previous one.
– Ocean heat content, for which records go back over half a century. More than 90% of the extra heat from global warming is going into the oceans – contributing to a rise in…
– Sea level. Tide gauge records go back to 1870, and sea level has risen at an accelerating rate.
– Specific humidity, which has risen in tandem with temperatures.
– Glaciers. 2009 was the 19th consecutive year in which there was a net loss of ice from glaciers worldwide.
– Northern Hemisphere snow cover, which has also decreased in recent decades.
– Perhaps the most dramatic change of all has been in Arctic sea ice. Satellite measurements are available back to 1979 and reliable shipping records back to 1953. September sea ice extent has shrunk by 35% since 1979.
Science isn’t like a house of cards, in that removing one line of evidence (eg. land surface air temperature) wouldn’t cause the whole edifice of anthropogenic global warming to collapse. Instead, “land surface warming” is one of more than ten bricks supporting “global warming”; and with global warming established, there is a whole other set of bricks supporting “anthropogenic global warming”. To undermine these conclusions, you’d need to remove most or all of the bricks supporting them – but as the evidence continues to pile up, that is becoming less and less likely.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/evidence-for-global-warming.htm
A somewhat more in-depth, "intermediate level" summary, with links to additional detail, appears here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/evidence-for-global-warming-intermediate.htm
I found this information while starting out as a skeptic, looking for the scientific support for the non-warming side of the "debate". I failed to find any credible scientific support at all for the skeptics' side (although I found a lot of blatantly mis-represented science actually supporting the conclusions of climate change and man-made causes), so I was forced to re-evaluate my position on the topic. I've continue to look for hopeful developments for another 14 years or so, but the news from peer-reviewed scientific studies published in leading journals just keeps getting worse.
+Doug Thompson absolutely – +Jeff Sullivan too bad "the facts" or reality isn't what's being force-fed to the ignorant masses.
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Volcanoes burp out 100x more CO2 in a year than everyone and their grandmothers cars combined so I am a bit skeptical that we are the soul cause of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for green energy and not having a carbon footprint. But have you guys seen the change in the sun as well? There's a lot more CME's from the sun that can cause a ton more damage to our Earth than we can in such short amount of time. Again not saying you are wrong, not saying I'm right.
Great links to study +Jeff Sullivan Thanks!
…I see earth's warming as a natural process, climate has always been changing since the very beginning, maybe humans have accelerated the process due to the damage of the ozone layer and pollution, but it's not only our fault. Glacial era ended by the same global warming, and back then there was no human pollution to blame. It was very naive of us to think that climate as we know it will remain unchanged forever. Stopping pollution will give us some more time, but the change is already happening. Adaptation is one of our greatest strengths as humans. We will have to adapt again.
+Mat Williams Here's a great resource that will educate you as to why the scientific consensus is that we ARE having an effect on climate: http://ncse.com/climate You're not wrong about volcanoes, but the trend in global temperature has now deviated from normal long-term variations enough to say with near-certainty that human action is responsible. It's not just about CO2, it's about many interlinked effects. And FYI, the sun is actually in a cooling period at the moment. Don't confuse the solar maximum sunspot cycle with solar temp..two different things. : )
It's just biased coloring. Nothing more.
+Mat Williams That might be true for "just cars" but not even remotely for total human CO2 emission from fossil fuel burning. Looking at numbers from the USGS and ORNL, (http://goo.gl/A52vx , http://goo.gl/P2A5B) CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning was ~230x greater than that from volcanoes for 2009. Besides, it's been shown that while our overall emission isn't nearly as much as natural CO2, we are predominately at fault for the increase of CO2 over the past century. In addition, our sources of CO2 are not part of some cycle which helps sequester it later.
Science is not absolutist enough to avow & stand behind the human cause for climate change, if at all a climate change is unequivocally demonstrable. Tomorrow, a new thing will be discovered and all the people declaring it today will, without a hesitation & in a whisker abrogate their declarations and ideas over all these years and disclaim them. (Well, they should if they are worth their salt – that is how science works). So, for me, making 'science as the reason behind the bugle blowing for climate change is just plain wrong and incorrect at the best & just a crap being thrown around by any and all at the worst. Said that, cutting down pollution & carbon emission needs to be done just because it is the right thing to do. Not even an inkling of doubt there. You don't need science to tell you that smoking is bad or drinking is bad etc.,
Yes +Ravishankar Ramanathan, science rewards and celebrates revisions to theories, that is how science works. I have a strong science and engineering background, and like you I approached the topic from a viewpoint of healthy skepticism. Unfortunately the evidence and revisions to the science completely disagree with your conclusions. If you'd ever like to discuss the topic from the standpoint of someone who has looked into the facts, you can see a great quantity of additional detail, all the way down to the individual scientific studies involved, at these links:
Whether or not Climate Change is Man-made (Basic Level)
"When presented with the overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming, many people react by asking "but how can we be sure that we’re causing the warming?" It turns out that the observed global warming has a distinct human fingerprint on it."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-basic.htm
Whether or not Climate Change is Man-made (Intermediate Level)
"In science, there's only one thing better than empirical measurements made in the real world – and that is multiple independent measurements all pointing to the same result. There are many lines of empirical evidence that all detect the human fingerprint in global warming:"
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-intermediate.htm
Whether or not Climate Change is Man-made (Advanced Level)
Not all of the factors influencing the planet drive the climate towards warming, but currently, the total effect of all of the positive and negative contributing factors does, and many of the strongest influences are driven by mankind:
"Fundamental physics and global climate models both make testable predictions as to how the global climate should change in response to anthropogenic warming. Almost universally, empirical observations confirm that these 'fingerprints' of anthropogenic global warming are present."
If the climate is in danger of being overly hot it is unfortunate that Mother Earth has as agents of her well being such liars and cheaters and untrustworthy conjurers who would go to such lengths so as to put forth purposely false data.
good night, I like
One of my favorites among recent claims +Ken Wallace is that one which says "Global warming has stopped", ironically proposed by people who also recently claimed that (human-influenced) climate change never existed in the first place.
Save our motherland..
Another source of reliable, science-based Climate Change information:
https://plus.google.com/117393512333338803220/posts/2psc6931HD3
gg
v all heumans are responsaable for it…
n v can't rezolv it untill v try to rezolv it unitedly….
beautiful picture
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uh ya
Our planet is burning!!
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Thanks for the pointers, +Jeff Sullivan For me, since climate science can never be a hard science as physics is, many of these claims/observations are being limited/colored by our current understanding. But, my strong adherence to the 'do the right thing' principle is more than good enough for doing whatever we could do stop furthering pollution of the planet.
I think we do not need the facade of global warming to stop us from the massive pollution. It should be innate to us. Alas it is not and hence, for the influence factor at least, I do take the 'global warming' idea.
Will look more into the facts of the climate sciences from your pointers later.
Much of the science around climate science is physics +Ravishankar Ramanathan. The ins and outs for energy on a planetary scale are relatively straightforward.
The American Institute of Physics, the main professional organization for physicists, summarizes the 100+ year history of our development of scientific knowledge on climate change here:
The Discovery of Global Warming
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm
The American Institute of Physics also summarizes the science:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
The American Geophysical Union, representing 50,000 scientists who perform relevant earth science research, issued statements in 2003 and 2008: http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.agu.org/sci%5Fpol/positions/climate%5Fchange2008.shtml
Most professional organizations and national institutes of science have issued statements on the topic.
Unfortunately climate change is mainly caused by gasses, not "pollution" as we normally think of it. The #1 contributor of mankind's carbon dioxide is coal-fired electric power generation (40%). The next biggest contributor (20%) is transportation, including ships, trains and trucks. So a personal commitment to "not pollute" will only get us so far. What is really needed is educated populations which can influence their governments to take an appropriate course on national policy issues such as energy production and import/export tariffs. Globalization, producing goods far from where they're needed, and the predominance of coal-fired power plants in the world's lowest-cost manufacturing areas (also the areas of high population growth), plays a major role.
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Revelation1
1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.
3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
Amen
bright
Al Gore loves you all…all the way to his bank.