As Climate Change Worsens, Scientists Feel Increasing Pressure to Speak Out

If we had listened to Hansen in 1988, New York wouldn't be underwater now.

Anyone who is interested can download the temperature data and plot it themsevles. There are three surface based data sets.  Those are HadCRUT3, NOAA Land & Oceans, and NASA GISS (i.e. Hansen).  All three are based primarily on the NCDC data.  HadCRUT3 and NOAA actually show a slight cooling trend since 2001 but not significant. GISS, based largely on the same data but with different "adjustments" shows significant warming.  In addition, there are two satellite based data records.  Those are UAH and RSS. They show a slight warming but not significant.  So Hansen's GISS is the only temperature record that shows any significant warming since 2001. 

Those of us who are skeptical of some of the claims being made by Hansen and his ilk don't deny that climate changes.  Climate has always changed. Speaking only for me, I became increasingly skeptical as I became increasingly aware of exagerations and misrepresentations. My background is in the sciences. That is not what scientists should be doing no matter how important they believe their "cause" to be. Hypotheses were being stated as facts. Speculation and modeling was being used as though it was empirical data.

If they can make a case for their crisis claims, I wish they would do it. Don't try to dismiss those of us who are skeptical by claiming the case has been made when it hasn't.   

I'm always puzzled by the argument that a lack of global temprature rise over the last decade casts doubt on the claim that there is a rising long term temperature trend.  If you look at the temperatures over the last 100 years or so the planet is obviously warming. There have been decades where it has been fairly flat, even falling, but these are more than offset by periods of rapid rise.  That variability makes perfect sense to me as there are multiple short term decadal influences on temperature such as la nina/el nino cycles which affect heat transfer between atmosphere and ocean, and times when atmospheric aerosols from industrial activity have been high and had a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back out into space (such as in mid century in Europe and North America, and currently in south and east Asia*).  It has been known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide absorbs radiant heat energy and any decent physics lab can demonstrate its atmospheric warming effect.  It would be quite surprising if our increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide by more than a third since the start of the industrial revolution were not warming the planet.  If carbon dioxide and other heat absorbing green house gasses are not the culprits, what is?  It cannot be changes in radiant energy arriving from the sun, as that has been flat or decreasing since around 1960.

*East Asian smog: http://www.the9billion.com/2011/11/14/thick-smog-over-eastern-china-stil...

Why Americans? I would think the global south would experience the worst effects. 

The problem will solve itself -- just not in a nice way.

said Santer, an IPCC report contributor, whose work linking climate change with anthropogenic factors has been attacked by climate change skeptics.

Well, DUH!

The reason he was attacked by skeptics is because he single handedly re-wrote the 1995 IPCC II Expert Approved Statements, which were:
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“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
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“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
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“Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
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“While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”

These Statements Were Replaced by Lead Author Ben Santer with:
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“There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols … from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change … These results point toward a human influence on global climate.”
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“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report
and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world, and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.

Avery and Singer 2006

Since then, we've had the super El Nino of 1998, and falling temperatures ever since.  In other words, there is STILL no evidence of a human CO2 component.  Some recent studies are suggesting that any warming effect of CO2 is completely regulated and overwhelmed by convective processes (clouds).  There is a reason clouds don't receive much attention in climate models.  Everyone already knows the answer and the answer kills the entire GHG theory, and the gravy train.  Nobody wants a bunch of unemployed climate scientists in the soup line.

What part is not true?  Temperatures are indeed following the same trend since the end of the LIA.  Same rate of rise (depending on time frame), but if anything, deceleration, not acceleration.  There just doesn't seem to be any sensitivity to CO2 at all.

I agree it does not make sense to heed our nation's top climate science.  They were off-track the whole time, which is why the entire AGW facade is crumbling.

There is a contradiction, here, that troubles me, and it is this:  They want government and citizens to act politically on the science, but the scientists say that they must not themselves act poltically and should keep their role as scientists separate from their role as citizens.  It is inconsistent and doesn't make sense.

These sicentists are the most informed CITIZENS we have.  Should I not use the special knowledge that I developed as an educator, for example, to inform my view as a citizen of what educational policy should be?  Should I keep my role as a creative artist separate from my role as citizen, and NOT use my creativity for the sake of democracy?

We hear all the time that democracy needs an educated citizenry; why should all that climate scientists have learned be separated from their role as citizens?  Their knowledge is vital to the well-being and thriving of the citizens of the world.  How can they expect us to embrace what they know and create policy from it if they don't do the same, and bring their scienctific knowledge TO their democratic role as citizens?

OF COURSE they should speak out.  All they are doing when they are telling us about the science is speaking truth to power, and speaking truth to power is what every citizen in a democracy has the political responsibility to do.

According to an article from Organic Consumers Association, factory farming has a greater effect on climate change than fossil fuels:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_24530.cfm

So I was surprised that factory farming was not mentioned in the present article.

What is baffling is why we are not approaching the problem based on science.

Between 80 and 90 percent of the heat of global warming has gone into warming the surface of the oceans.
 
Nature’s response to warming oceans is the hurricane. 
 
The same energy can be harnessed with 1 meter in diameter, inverted, ammonia, hurricanes to energize the planet, eliminate carbon emissions, increase carbon dioxide absorption (cooler water absorbs more CO2), cool the oceans and prevent potential extinction events due to clathrate breakdown or thermal runaway caused by warming amplification from increased atmospheric moisture. 
 
There is no better way to manage the climate problem than by producing all of the renewable energy we will ever need.