Earth Talk | Is the globe really warming?
February 22, 2009 by afp
Filed under *AugustaFreePress.com
Dear EarthTalk: Don’t all these huge snow and ice storms across the country mean that the globe isn’t really warming? I’ve never seen such a winter!
- Mark Franklin, Helena, Mont. On the surface it certainly can appear that way. But just because some of us are suffering through a particularly cold and snowy winter doesn’t refute the fact that the globe is warming as we continue to pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. And the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that recent decades have been the warmest since at least around 1000 AD, and that the warming we’ve seen since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1,000 years.
“You can’t tell much about the climate or where it’s headed by focusing on a particularly frigid day, or season, or year, even,” writes Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s all in the long-term trends,” concurs Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Most scientists agree that we need to differentiate between weather and climate. The NOAA defines climate as the average of weather over at least a 30-year period. So periodic aberrations—like the harsh winter storms ravaging the Southeast and other parts of the country this winter—do not call the science of human-induced global warming into question.
The flip side of the question, of course, is whether global warming is at least partly to blame for especially harsh winter weather. As we pointed out in a recent EarthTalk column, warmer temperatures in the winter of 2006 caused Lake Erie to not freeze for the first time in its history. This actually led to increased snowfalls because more evaporating water from the lake was available for precipitation.
But while more extreme weather events of all kinds—from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts—are likely side effects of a climate in transition, most scientists maintain that any year-to-year variation in weather cannot be linked directly to either a warming or cooling climate.
Even most global warming skeptics agree that a specific cold snap or freak storm doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not the climate problem is real. One such skeptic, Jimmy Hogan of the Rational Environmentalist website writes, “If we are throwing out anecdotal evidence that refutes global warming we must at the same time throw out anecdotal evidence that supports it.” He cites environmental groups holding up Hurricane Katrina as proof of global warming as one example of the latter.
If nothing else, we should all keep in mind that every time we turn up the thermostat this winter to combat the cold, we are contributing to global warming by consuming more fossil fuel power. Until we can shift our economy over to greener energy sources, global warming will be a problem, regardless of how warm or cold it is outside.
TheGreenMiles on Sun, 22nd Feb 2009 6:17 pm
Excellent explanation. As my friend Andy Buchsbaum at the National Wildlife Federation said recently, “There’s a reason it’s called global warming - not Cleveland warming.” There’s a great map of local temperature anomalies here … http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/02/temperature-anomalies.gif
Max Friedman on Sun, 22nd Feb 2009 10:41 pm
The column was doing a fairly good job of how to approach the issue of global warming until the last one, then the leftist, scare tactic propaganda set in.
Hey dummy. We (Va.) get our energy from nuclear power, as does much of Maryland. They don’t use fossil fuels so there is no contribution to carbon dioxide (unless you count on our naturally breathing).
“Unless we shift our economy over to greener energy sources, global warming will be a problem.”
BS. BS. BS. Global warming, if it is a real trend, as it has been for hundreds of thousands of years (and also global cooling - check out the fossil record dumbo), then using “greener energy sources” isn’t going to do a damned thing.
How, if you want to switch to a “green source”, go ahead. Good for your. Your contribution to effecting “global warming” will amount to zip, zilch, nada, zero. If the sun wants to heat itself up and send that heat to earth (and Mars, and Venus, and Mercury), then you aren’t going to stop it unless you have a God-complex.
Remember Icarus, if nothing else.
One big burping volcano can change the world’s weather for years, as did Mt. Pinituba in the Philippines and Mt. St. Helens in the US. Krakatoa put on quite a show too and its ashes remained in the atmosphere for years, lowering temperatures due to its blocking more sunlight from hitting the earth’s lower atmosphere and surface.
However, life did not end, oubladee, oubladoo.
Stop with the Voodoo Environmentalism, or next you’ll be promoting Lysenkism.
Erik Curren on Mon, 23rd Feb 2009 3:27 pm
There’s so much confusion about global warming out there, so I applaud the AFP for printing this clear and useful column.
With all due respect, I have to correct Mr. Friedman twice. First, according to the US Department of Energy, America gets about half its electric power from coal. Being a coal state, Virginia gets slightly more than 50% of its power from coal-fired power plants. There’s no need to debate this; just look it up.
And to say that nuclear power doesn’t use fossil fuels is also, broadly speaking, not correct. Mining and processing the uranium used by nuclear reactors is an energy intensive process that uses much fossil fuel, particularly diesel fuel to power the large machines at the mines.
Scientific facts about global warming are not scare tactics. They are documented truths that we must face, no matter how inconvenient. But that’s not a cause for despair — if we do it right, clean energy could be the world’s most lucrative business opportunity and lead to thousands of green jobs.