Guest Post by Steven Goddard
Steve McIntyre points out that NOAA’s Susan Solomon saw fit to exclude a statement of measurements from IPCC WG1. With such certainty then, it’s no wonder she’s certain that our current situation is “irreversible”. Well then, let’s not worry about it if one of NOAA’s lead scientists says the effects are well nigh irreversible. What she’s serving up is pure alarmism.
NOAA has issued a warning to the occupants of (some) planet :
Global warming has reached the point of no return, a study published in the Tuesday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a joint team of the U.S., French and Swiss researchers concludes. Even if the world reduces emissions of CO2 to the level before the industrial revolution, it will take at least 1,000 years to reverse the climate change effect that have already taken hold, AP on Sunday quoted the team as saying. Dr. Susan Solomon of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research laboratory led the study. “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that’s not true,” she said, adding the effects are well nigh irreversible.
That got me wondering what she meant by “back to normal.” Perhaps it means sea ice at normal levels? No that can’t be it, because sea ice area has already recovered to “normal.”
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Perhaps she means violent weather, like strong tornadoes? Longing for a return to the 1970s, when there were lots more of them?
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/tornado/tornadotrend.jpg
In 1908, a hurricane formed on March 6, the earliest on record. Ah, for the good old days of early spring hurricanes…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1908_Atlantic_hurricane_season_map.png
In 1954, Hurricane Alice formed on December 30, the latest on record. Nothing like a New Year’s hurricane to brighten up the holidays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1954_Atlantic_hurricane_season_map.png
In 1961, Hurricane Carla made landfall in Texas. It was the most intense hurricane to ever hit the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Carla
In 1900, a hurricane killed 8.000 people in Galveston, Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane
In 1780, a hurricane killed more than 27,500 people in the Carribean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hurricane_of_1780
In 1960, 60% of the farmland in China received no rain. Somewhere between 20 and 43 million people died due to extreme weather and mismanagement by the socialist government.
In the 1930s, the US suffered extreme heat and drought, resulting in the dust bowl. It was the warmest decade on record in the US (at least before USHCN cleverly adjusted it downwards.)
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
FFFFfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff-
More insanity from the National Academy of Concerned Scientists as I believe they are now calling themselves.
I get the feeling that ‘back to normal’ in this case means a lot like when a political person says “the middle class” in speechs. Its a mythical talking point and nothing more.
“It’s irreversible!”
“Just like my raincoat!”
Bill O’Reilly should get her on his show and ask that very question – “What exactly is it that she wants to return to? ”
Please define “normal” Susan, (or resign, your choice..)
Irreversible? Because no one knows where the norm is perhaps it is in the process of reversing. This idea is non versible!!!!
Yep, past the point of no return. I guess we should just continue on with business as usual.
Ms. Solomon needs to learn how to pitch a deal ….
Good one. Was still chuckling at Willis’s Homer Simpson graphic and now this McClimatologist! Thanks for the laugh.
And thanks for this perspective. The way these folks try to ignore the reality of the past and invent a conveniently skewed image of ‘normal’ is downright Orwellian.
Then again, it is Post-Normal ‘Science’ as they call it.
Well, then, I guess there’s no point in implementing carbon taxes or controls if the damage is irreversible. I guess we either get to adapting to the new ‘permanent’ conditions or go cower in the corner of our non-air conditioned house!
So what. CO2 never caused warming in the past. CO2 lags warming by 800 years in the ice cores. A rise in CO2 before the warming might be novel, but the earth found a way to reduce CO2 before.
Can’t we just patent oxygen and then license it’s use back to AL Gore & Co.
I am pretty sure she is talking about the CO2 level returning to around 280 ppm.
That is what “normal” means (I think).
But I can tell you are talking tongue in cheek.
Steven! Let’s clear this one up once & for all. Has sea ice really “returned to normal”? Just because it has recently touched the 1979 -2000 average, does that mean it’s back to normal? And oh yes I do know the arguement about “what is normal” & that no-one really knows the true extent pre-1979. But, if you’re prepared to use this as your bench mark, then we have to assume that sea ice is far from “back to normal” if all we are actually seeing is current extreme maximums just managing to edge into what was the normal of yesteryear.
In this sense, you are as guilty as anyone of (Dr Solomon included) of misrepresenting the evidence & this alone makes me inclined to mistrust your line of reasoning.
Actually: I think the leadership of AL is commendable and we should all Build a 6,000 Sq. Ft House, drive fleets of Escalades every where you go and get ourselves a couple of private aircraft each.
I live and breath. I am a human living on this planet. Been here for 41 years now. Could someone please tell me what adverse effects, what cataclysmic events have changed the world I live in? I live in the same county in which I was born. My father was born in this county. My grandfather was born her. My great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather were both born in this same county. My great-great-great-grandfather is buried in this same county where I was born. His stone is still there in Galatia Cemetery along with the stones of all my fathers leading down. What has changed? Some say it is warmer. I certainly think that it was very cold and snowy in the 70’s. The winters (in my opinion) got warmer and milder for a stretch sometime between the 80’s and 2000. But we’ve had back-to-back record breaking winters, with storms and cold. I’m relishing in this current warm Spring!
Back to my original question. What adverse effects have changed the world I live in? The lake is still at the same levels as when I was a child. All rivers flow much like the did when my great-great-great grandfather lived here. Except, of course, they damned the White River back in the ’40’s. That was a cataclysmic change brought on by man! Indeed! The insurgent lakes swallowed towns! But concrete and steel brought that about – not CO2.
What else? What else has changed my world? We had a tornado that hurt Gassville, AR really bad. That’s in my county. But I remember tornadoes all my life. I remember my dad talking about devastating tornadoes. There are old papers here that talk about tornadoes all the way back to the 1800’s, the days of my gaffers. What’s new?
Weather isn’t climate. Okay. How about 150 years of weather? If my world is going to hell so quickly, I’d like to ask… why are all the people moving to my little hometown? Why can’t I see the cataclysm? Where is the whirlwind? I sit out on my deck and drink in the glory of my world. I see no devastation, no drought, no flood, no nothing. My world is peaceful and serene. The birds sing, the deer run, the snow comes and goes. The sun shines, the clouds roll. It rains. It shines. What’s changed? Can somebody please tell me?
How long can people claim we are experiencing an apocalypse without anything happening out of the normal?
/signed
Translation:
“YOU’RE all gonna’ die!
It’s worse than we thought but, hey! I’m not giving up that beachfront condo I got real cheap in the ’80’s.
We need more money for research to stop this irreversible process.”
Well, heck, since they pirated the term “climate change”, and since earth’s climate has been changing for, oh, 4.5 billion years or so, it’s pretty difficult to refute that argument.
Oh, you say they’re talking about something else? Some sort of anthropomorphic thingy? Since climate has been changing since way, way, way before man arrived on this planet, how can man change climate change?
Their piracy is hard to fight–how does one stop climate from changing?
Well I agree with her; the arrow of time is irreversible, and there is no going back.
But as to the CO2; we now enjoy the lowest CO2 levels that we have seen in the last 600 million years; and there’s no returning to those days either.
Ben Kellett (11:41:01) :
My statement is “sea ice area has returned to normal”
And yes it has.
Ben! Let’s clear this one up once and for all. Sea Ice Extent is a cyclestationary stochastic process currently in a long term (since the little ice age) downward trend. There is no such thing as ‘normal’.
@Hunter,
Apocalypse – “lifting of the veil” or “revelation” a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception.
Works for me, perhaps not in the way intended by others however.
Al Gored (11:39:24) :
Anthony added the awesome picture.
Only Obama the First can reverse Global Warming…
No, we cant go back to normal. It was worse than we thought back then.