global warming kills more than terrorism

[reality]

Because there is random variability on top of the anthropogenic influence. I hope you already knew that.

I'm more concerned about what you know, quite frankly. You're very quick to throw around epithets like simpleton, yet you haven't shown an ability to look at the issue in anything but the most simplistic terms.

You are correct in saying that there is an influence from anthropogenic emissions. You continue to look at the problem too simplistically, though. Temperature is the result of complex interactions between atmospheric processes. That randomness you glibly wave away is the key to answering the question. Temperature is a function of everything from insolation, to convection, radiation, advection, topography, land-use, ... Anthropogenic emissions are ONE factor among many and they are no more or less important than any of the others. Over any given period of time, one factor may dominate the others. That's why the issue of whether CO2 increases lead or lag temperature increases is really a red herring. Look at the impact of sulphate aerosol emissions on the US temperature record, for example.

If you want to understand how increasing GHG levels in the atmosphere leads to a changing climate, you have to look at the issue from the standpoint of those interactions you want to hand-wave away. Climate change is about changing the distribution of weather, both spatially and temporally, and the intensity of that weather.

Because there is a lot of interannual variability. Again I'm sure you knew that, and I don't think I have given you reason to think me quite so stupid as to not know it myself. Why do you always return to your odd fixation on storms?

If I thought you were stupid, I wouldn't bother with you. What's so amusing is that you resort to ad-hominem responses simply because of an inability that the two of us seem to be having in communicating ideas. I thought better of you.

To respond to your post, what causes the interannual variability? Why does one year have few severe weather events and another have a lot? The answer is that weather is ingredients based. If you have the proper ingredients coming together in the proper measure at the proper time, you get the weather. Some years the ingredients come together repeatedly, like this year's hurricane season so far, sometimes they do not.

Using thunderstorms as an example, if you have sufficient instability and a mechanism to realize that instability you get a thunderstorm. Very simple. In order for there to be a detectable change in frequency or intensity of thunderstorms you must alter the ingredients. You have to either change the instability or the mechanisms needed to realize that instability (or you could throw shear into the mix, but that's another problem). That means if you want to understand how increased GHG levels will affect severe weather - and remember that one of the predictions for climate change is that there will be more severe weather - you have to understand how increased GHG levels impact the basic processes that lead to their formation. You cannot merrily wave your hands and claim that increased temperature will lead to more storms.
That simply isn't true.

Since any individual weather event is nothing more than the output of dozens of different processes interacting with each other on different time and space scales that to separate out ONE cause is simply ludicrous.

It also means that we need to understand cause and effect a lot better. Let's look at the European heat-wave, since you brought it up. It is your claim that it was "caused" by global warming. I claim that global warming MIGHT have played a role in it, but that there is no way to tell. What ingredients are needed to produce an extended period of hot weather?

1. High Insolation
2. A blocking pattern
3. Dry conditions? Not necessarily, but it helps.
4. Strong, persistent warm advection?

There are more. Do any of them mandate that increased CO2 be present? Nope. In other words, have heat-waves occurred before there? Could increased CO2 excerbate an existing condition? Absolutely. Does that mean that CO2 necessarily is the proximate CAUSE of the event? Nope. Does it mean that in one event it might play no role but in another it might play a major role? Possibly. Is there any way for you to tell from that single event how significant the role CO2 played in it was? No.

To sum up, the reason we have not found a statistically significant trend in severe weather statistics - and make no mistake about it, there are people here who have attempted to use the lack of a trend to show that global warming and climate change are not occurring - is that the ingredients that lead to their formation have not changed sufficiently to produce such a trend.

If, for example, we expect to eventually see an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes, and the temperature of the sub-tropical Atlantic is one of the ingredients necessary to produce them, why would one expect to see a trend if the ocean temperature hasn't been unduly affected yet? Wait and see though. There have been 3 strong hurricanes that have affected Florida in the past month. How long do you think it will be before someone makes a post claiming that global warming is the CAUSE of those hurricanes?

You could say it is the result of integrating the previous day's weather conditions, but that's not exactly helpful in trying to understand the system.

If the temperature had never before reached 25C in that region, then it would be reasonable to suspect that anthropogenic influences could have played a part.

No it isn't. The only reasonable thing to suspect is that the ingredients necessary to produce a 25C temperature were present and that increased CO2 may have played a role. When I forecast temperatures, CO2 is not even a consideration. If we see that 25C temperatures are routinely being achieved in an area where it has never happened before and if the footprint of that warming is such that it is consistent with GHG theory, then we can make some statements about anthropogenic influences and their role.

Does the anthropogenic component only work when it gets hot out? Pretty selective don't you think? Does it work when there's a cold spell? It sure does. It's just that it's impact is muted by other factors. Does the fact that we have suffered through the coldest summer in 130 years mean that anthropogenic emissions didnt' play a role? Of course not, but there are people here who have posted that very thing and it is ludicrous.

Now I have repeated my analogy to you, including the question you ducked. I'd be grateful if you could give a reply this time.

I ducked nothing. I prefer to explain my position in more detail, without flipping a coin. I'd be even more grateful if you could look at these issues without employing hand-waving arguments. A hot day is sometimes just a hot day. There are reasons why weather occurs. Yes, we can make broad statements about the trends we can expect in severe weather, heat-waves, forest fires, etc. in a global warming situation. That is insufficient to claim that every time a severe weather event occurs, the cause is global warming, especially when global warming is largely a regional trend and has not manifested itself significantly in many parts of the world.

[david16]

You still havn't answered Haanu's question

[reality]

Originally Posted by david16

You still havn't answered Haanu's question

Weather and therefore climate change for physical reasons, David. A coin comes up heads or tails, not by chance, but by the interactions of various forcings on the coin during the process of flipping it. What we call chance, at least in this context, isn't. We call it chance simply because we are ignorant of the processes involved. That doesn't mean that they don't exist. It depends on the density of the air, the weight of the coin, the force applied to the coin to flip it, whether or not the hand is raised to meet the coin or whether it remains stationary, ... If the coin lands heads up are you going to insist that it was the density of the air that "caused" it to land that way? How do you go about proving it?

Are you going to insist that this and only this factor was involved? That is what Haanu is insisting. Indeed, he is going out of his way to confuse weather and climate. Here is what I am saying in a nutshell....

1. You can never attribute a single cause to any weather event, so making claims about this event or that being "CAUSED" by global warming.

2. You cannot make claims about a trend in weather statistics, or its lack for that matter, unless there is a physical reason to expect such a trend.

3. Association is not the same as causation. Neither is correlation the same as causation. The mere occurrence of a heatwave during a time when temperatures are expected to be increasing is not sufficient proof that the heatwave was caused by global warming.

[MarkuisMellvile]

There are signs of progress in the preceeding contributions, although much of what has been argued is a matter of semantics.

Even reality confirms that radiative forcing is one contributory factor in the mix of influences over weather and climatic patterns and events.

No-one can attribute particular weather events to anthropogenic influences, but to deny that people die as a result of the way humans are damaging the planet is naive and wrong.

Why spend time squabbling about choice of words while the environmental damage continues? All that achieves is to delay implementation of solutions to the mess humankind has created. But nor should we rush headlong into poorly planned developments.

The starting point has to be a sustainable energy supply, by which I mean one not dependent on finite fuel supplies of any kind. Cleaning up fossil fuel technology is crucial now, as we've drifted for years bickering about what we should replace ff with. At the same time we must also reduce energy wastage, and invest in carbon neutral or non-combustion based energy technologies.

We must do it all, starting now, and simultaneously, with the ultimate goal of clean energy supplies for all and an end to our profligate use of resources.

[reality]

Why spend time squabbling about choice of words while the environmental damage continues? All that achieves is to delay implementation of solutions to the mess humankind has created. But nor should we rush headlong into poorly planned developments.

Once again we get back to whether the IPCC 'scenarios' are accurate. It does seem difficult to give them any scientific backing when meteorologists get tommorrows weather wrong quite as often as they do, let alone 50-100 years into the future.

I do think it would be nice if someone questioned the motives of certain environmental groups, such as WorldWatch. It could be that their motives when they make the outlandish claims that they do (with Lester Brown fast becoming a joke).

The starting point has to be a sustainable energy supply, by which I mean one not dependent on finite fuel supplies of any kind. Cleaning up fossil fuel technology is crucial now, as we've drifted for years bickering about what we should replace ff with. At the same time we must also reduce energy wastage, and invest in carbon neutral or non-combustion based energy technologies.

I'm beginning to question your motives in continually championing the renewable energy industry. Is oil running out? Is the sea level actually rising? How do you know that global warming will destroy us all? How much does manking influence climate change?

I'll be interested to see what new predictions the IPCC come up with in Vienna next week. All their previous predictions have been very wide of the mark. Lets hope they're getting better with practice as the governments of the world are being fooled by their claims.

[Matt]

30,000 people died in Europe a year ago because of the most extreme heatwave recorded.

Weather events have been becoming more extreme in Europe.

The average weather over a period of time is known as climate. Therefore, we could say that climate is changing, and we could call that climate change.

We could then go on to say that continual climate change, resulting in more extreme weather is leading to increased fatalaties. None of this is scare-mongering, none of this is advanced science, it's what is happening here and now.

Now lets go back to the topic title briefly... perhaps global warming ought to read climate change. Can anyone deny that those 30,000 deaths which were caused by a heatwave actually happened?

Can anyone deny that there is a general trend towards more extreme weather conditions?

I don't see how, because this is fact.

So we have global warming, which is happening, and we have 30,000 deaths caused by a heatwave. I guess I can't personally guarentee a connection, but I can't see any alternative reasoning right now.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by reality

I'm beginning to question your motives in continually championing the renewable energy industry. Is oil running out? Is the sea level actually rising? How do you know that global warming will destroy us all? How much does manking influence climate change?
.

It's a basic principle, if you have a finite resource, and you take away from that resource, the resource runs out. In England, we call the process during which the resource is taken away until it runs out.... 'running out'

And finally, yes, sea level is rising by approx 2mm a year. I hope that answers that question for you.

[Matt]

And finally, I think we're all missing the point here. For me Environmental Science isn't just about anthropogenic causes. For whatever reason, be it Milankovitch cycles, increased sunspot activity, natural feedback mechanisms, or any others, I think we can safely say that if the earth did warm much, which considering current trends is a distinct possibility, then there is a huge pottential for large scale loss of life and economy.

Maybe we don't have to curb our own activities because they are altering the environment, maybe we have to curb them to balance a natural change, whichever way we need to decide exactly where we stand on the issue, and act accordingly.

[reality]

So we have global warming, which is happening, and we have 30,000 deaths caused by a heatwave. I guess I can't personally guarentee a connection, but I can't see any alternative reasoning right now.

Sometimes these things do occur naturally you know. If we have a particularly cold winter this year will that be a result of global warming as well? If the winter is mild and thousands are saved from the cold weather will there be headlines saying how glorious global warming is?

It's a basic principle, if you have a finite resource, and you take away from that resource, the resource runs out. In England, we call the process during which the resource is taken away until it runs out.... 'running out'

I understand the principal but you havn't said whether oil IS actually running out. Think about it. The oil companies aren't going to search for oil for 75 years into the future, they'll search for oil for say 25 years into the future. So its surely reasonable to assume that they have far from exhausted their search for oil because they have enough right now to last them the next 25 years.

And finally, yes, sea level is rising by approx 2mm a year. I hope that answers that question for you.

According to Nils Axel Morner, head of paleo-gyophysics at Stockholm University, sea levels will rise no more than 2 inches by the end of the 21st century. Is this really a problem that mankind cannot cope with?

And finally, I think we're all missing the point here. For me Environmental Science isn't just about anthropogenic causes. For whatever reason, be it Milankovitch cycles, increased sunspot activity, natural feedback mechanisms, or any others, I think we can safely say that if the earth did warm much, which considering current trends is a distinct possibility, then there is a huge pottential for large scale loss of life and economy.

To me this is precisely the point. Things like Kyoto will be hugely expensive (we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars here). When you think that anthropogenic production of CO2 is probably less than 10% of the total CO2 production you surely have to question whether this is a suitable use of resources? Spend all that money to make no sizeable impact. What is the point exactly?