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
hunter (17:19:33) :
The end is nigh and always has been for some ever since we crawled out of the bushes millions of years ago.
No need to scrutinize the logic of the illogical.
re: jeff brown (13:01:38):
Eskimo oral history refers to years when the ice does not return in winter. “Always returns” is not accurate.
George E. Smith (16:27:36) :
This my reference
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
There’s still plenty of alamism in the pipeline.
So what exactly is the point of spending trillions of dollars and changing everyone’s life style? At least doing nothing is cheap, and under the precautionary principle, if nothing unusual is happening it would be worth-while spending a few dollars to make sure nothing unusual is happening.
Mike D. (17:21:57),
Susan also neglects to mention that the Eskimo village in question was granted $150 million by the UN to relocate.
The Eskimos didn’t get all the loot though – they probably didn’t get much, after the UN bureaucrats intercepted their cut. But the village [consisting of a relatively small population] moved to a ready-built new village. WUWT had a recent story on it, but I’m too busy to look it up right now.
I was concerned over the last paragraph in that article:
Up to 1m sea level rise from…..melting icebergs o_O ?
Just for kicks, take a gander at the temperature/CO2 record over the last 600 million years. We’re near record lows. Both have been plunging for the last 50 million years in an in a cold low carbon era. I would think what qualifies as “normal” is what has predominated since the modern phyla emerged in the Cambrian 500mya.
The truth is “normal” has a rather wide range, we’re near the bottom of cold/low CO2 side of it, and at least thousands if not millions of years away from a warm high carbon extremes. We should be worried about colding not warming. We’re one supervolcano away from a global snowball. What sincere people desire (those without political, social, or financial) interests is some kind of semi-safe statsis near about what they’re accustomed to with no weather surprises. Good luck with that. Weather and climate both vary naturally. Keeping the status quo indefinitely is abnormal.
sorry
I should have said that the
The temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic, [not exponential]
Sweet stuff all that alarmism. The sun giveth and the sun taketh (not giveth) away….energy.
Just how do you properly sacrifice a maiden (or whatever) to the carbon god(s)?
Heart hacked out with a polar bear claw, then keel hauled under an iceberg?
Chained to an idling Hummer on the melting spring arctic ice?
@Ben Klijn Kellett:
Of course you’re right that it’s premature to say or imply that the Arctic ice is now tracking the “mean” line just because it’s briefly touched it. That happened earlier in this century too, but the minimum ice extent in the summer, which is more important, fell below the mean line. It could easily happen again. If it tracks the mean-line this year in the summer, THEN we can safely (touch wood) say, “cool it, we’re back to normal.”
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The question is more about whether something is ‘abnormal’ rather than ‘normal’. Low levels of arctic sea ice may not be ‘normal’ but it has happened several times over the past hundred years so is not ‘abnormal’. As such it can not be used to prove AGW. If all ice disappeared and it stayed clear then that would be abnormal and would require an explanation. Even then it does not prove AGW, it would be just one possibility.
There are HURRICANES, ie. Carla, and hurricanes, ie. Susan. One is a killer and the other is a gentle zephyr. Carla would blow my birdfeeder and me away. Susan is a mild breeze on the deck, but it does smell funny.
Dr. Susan Solomon of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research laboratory is correct. Her world of AGW has past the point of no return. And it is not going to return. Now she and her peers can get real jobs.
The warmists are useful tools of the folks who are anxious to start trading carbon credits – at taxpayer expense of course. You won’t be hearing much alarmism after they get cap and trade passed.
People are being played like fiddles, including many of the AGW faithful. Individuals like Susan Solomon are simply pawns in a much bigger game.
In a year or two, after the politicos pass “cap and tax,” they’ll be pointing to their obvious success as things continue to cool down. Catastrophe miraculously averted! The electorate will be lulled back to sleep as more of their wealth is siphoned. What a scam.
I think it obvious – the insightful Ms. Solomon wishes a return to the native state before life polluted the universe – no living “emissions” to disturb the “natural” state of the cosmos. Where do we find these folks?
But, with apologies to those who do not believe, I recall that “God contemplates his universe, magnificent as it is, but who, absent man, contemplates God in return?”
Are you so sure that God would prefer a dead rock, in its “natural” state? Would He? Let us ask Ms. Solomon, who would, not doubt, think the question absurd.
One might get the impression from reading the article the Solomon study is new. It’s not. Here is a link to the study.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
REPLY: Nobody implied that it was new, but with Steve McIntyre’s pointing out Solomon’s recent aversion to having a statement in WG1 about measurement, It reminded Goddard of her overblown claims about CO2 residence time, so we decided to have a little fun.
Of course you wouldn’t understand that, being all puffed up with CO2 and all that. Bring on on the wailing, and no I don’t care what you’ll have to complain about next. – A
Pearland Aggie (11:39:31) wrote:
“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!”
Aggie, that’s a very logical interpretation. However reasonable people are not the target audience of the article. Joe Greenshirt is more apt to reason as follows:
Wow, I sure hope that Susan Soloman is premature about our having reached the point of no return. If we act immediately, and all stop driving cars, stop heating our houses, stop using electricity, substitute rat-burgers for grain-fed meat in our diets, limit ourselves to one child per family, and read up on Pol Pot for inspiration on how implement the above, then the planet may barely squeak through. Thanks for the heads-up, Susan!
The end is near!
Pass the Kool Aid!
Oops – Global Dumbing!
Dang, it’s infectious!
Lewis Gordon Pugh
“Each time I return to the Arctic, I am shocked by how much ice has melted and how rapidly it’s happening.”
http://polardefenseproject.org/blog/?page_id=16
Pugh claims on his website that this was the furthest North anyone has ever traveled by Kayak, (81 degrees N) however critics point out that in 1895, explorers using Kayaks reached 86 degrees North, and their expedition records show that one of them swam to retrieve a Kayak, thus exceeding Pugh’s trip and preceding him by 113 years. Pugh has not chosen to respond to these accusations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Gordon_Pugh
Wren (21:24:43) :
Another year of global warming, and we are further down the death spiral.
You get the feeling Sue & crrew are a few fries short of a happy meal?