Are we asking the wrong questions about global warming?
October 11, 2007Public discussion over global warming is often caught in a vortex of misinformation perpetuated by extreme forces who say it’s all just a big hoax.
This often causes the most relevant scientific questions to get lost, suggests Washington state climatologist Philip Mote, who has been working for years to understand climate changes brought about by human activity.
What we should be talking about when we talk about climate change, Mote suggests, is no longer if it is occurring but how and where. Further, what lasting impacts climate change will have upon individual regions like the Pacific Northwest, and most important, what can we do about it"
Next week Mote, who is one of the lead authors of the recently released Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will deliver a public lecture on these questions at the AVS 54th International Symposium & Exhibition in Seattle. The lecture is free and open to the public.
“Climate change is real and it is a problem,” says Mote, a researcher with the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group. “It’s going to exacerbate all sorts of economic and environmental problems, and in the next few decades we could be determining events that will happen thousands of years from now.”
In his lecture, Mote will examine the science of climatology and how climate changes are tracked—through monitoring sea levels, snowfall, tree rings, coral reef kills, satellite images, and other year-to-year measurements. He will also discuss possible technological fixes and other solutions—from the legitimate to the loony.
Mote has spent years tracking climate trends in the Pacific Northwest—roughly the Columbia river basin, which encompasses most of Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, and a large part of British Columbia. He and his colleagues look specifically at the annual mountain snowpack, which is determined by the weight of a sample of snow taken from a carefully selected spot each year on April 1st, when the snow is at its thickest.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been collecting such snow cores every year at more than a thousand locations scattered around the west for decades because nothing is more relevant to the agriculture of the Pacific Northwest than winter snowfall. As the heat returns to the mountains in the spring and the snow melts, the runoff feeds the region’s streams and rivers. Such stream water is the lifeblood of agriculture in the west, where surface sources provide most of the region’s freshwater.
But the snowpack samples are also something more. They provide a climate record of the mountains because some of the sites have been operating for half a century. And the climate record shows declines in annual snowpack in many of the locations where snow cores are collected. As the snowfall decreases, the runoff volume is less, which means less water is available.
How much this change is directly attributable to greenhouse gas emissions is an issue that is still being studied by climate researchers. Some snow disappears for reasons other than global warming. In fact, Mote recently analyzed the glacial retreat atop East Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro and determined that it is not linked to global warming. The temperatures there rarely rise above freezing, even in the summer, and the declines started before the beginning of the 20th century. In fact the only thing that could save the snows of Kilimanjaro, he says, could be global warming. More frequent snowfall would change the reflective nature of Kilimanjaro’s snow, altering its energy absorption and causing it to disappear more slowly.
This in no way means that climate change in the Pacific Northwest is not real. The annual snowfall declines in the mountains around the Columbia River valley are reflected in the data and are clearly linked to increased temperatures, says Mote. But researchers are still learning more about the causes of the increased temperatures.
As for what to do about the problem, Mote remains optimistic that a solution can be had, though he doubts we can solely count on a technological solution. A cautious reading of the history of large-scale human interventions in climate is not terribly promising, he says.
More likely a workable solution would be a multifarious approach implementing changes in global patterns of fuel consumption, carbon output, emissions, and energy usage. Such an approach is doable, but it would require a massive global effort by governments, industry, and consumers and demand a rare combination of political will, technological innovation, and public support.
Still, Mote says, “All solutions applied vigorously could get us there.”
Source: American Institute of Physics
Sep 08, 2009 |
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Climatologists look at emissions from a limited time frame of human activity, which happens to coincide with an increase in global temperature, which quite frankly, could have started much sooner, but went unnoticed. This is insufficient data to suggest we are the cause. It only means that for as long as we cared or where able to watch, there's been a correlation.
NASA looks at solar output and states that there is no significant increase. Thats fine, if you assume that the process is driven by the Sun. According to Plasma Cosmology, this is the tail wagging the dog.
The Sun, as are all stars, is powered by external electrical currents that pervade the universe. These same currents connect all solar bodies in a vast electrical circuit. This is the reason why more and more of the observed bodies exhibit 'hot spots' at the poles, and anomalous 'jets' which defy explanation. It is the INPUT energy to the Earth that is responsible for global warming, and not the output of the Sun. Depending on locality in space, the Sun may not be affected at all..at least not yet.
Prehistorical increases in CO2 gas, as shown in ice cores is the result of the warming, not the cause. How can effect precede cause when mankind was not around, or at least able to impact the global environement? How can it be explained that Mars is experiencing a similar warming trend? To my knowledge the only vehicles there produce very little, if any emissions.
Alarmists can continue to suggest we drastically change our lives, but the question still remains whether it will impact global warming at all. I say it will not. Reductions in emissions are a good thing in its own right, regardless of the reason, and we are already on a path down that road.
Stay the course! Focus on minimizing the human cost, and leave Earth to its own resources.
If everyone thought the same way perhaps we could do something to offset problems caused by Natural Climate Change.All the disaster hype is counter productive.It is easy to prove the lies and exagerations in these projections are wrong thus putting doubt on the truths contained in them.
I disagree to a point with your second paragraph.The temperature has been shown to be rising since ice age we are still in started to end about 12000 or more years ago.This fact has not gone unnoticed but ignored by the doom and gloom brigade.If any warming IS caused by Man,this trend should be subracted from the total warming.I think this would be more realistic than blaming it all on Man and taxing us into financial ruin.
As for the Goricle,check http://newparty.c...ore.html to see what has been proven in a British Court.