Vergent Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 http://actsofminortreason.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-of-climate.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LithiaWx Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 This blog entry does not belong on a scientific forum, total conjecture. Also lol at the idea that the snow Seattle saw this past week and the Alaskan snowfall this season are related to climate change, I would love to see some facts to back up these claims. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LithiaWx Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 here's an overview: http://climatecommun...ather/overview/ Trenbeth--along with Kerry Emmanuel, Michael Mann, and Brad Udall--had a big panel on it at the GSA meeting in October. in addition, there's a day long series of papers on extreme weather events and climate change at the AMS meeting now. and the IPCC report that came out in November I think also discussed this. this is pretty much mainstream science among climate scientists. Snow in Seattle is not that uncommon. I just don't understand how you can link the two with any certainty. Sure it's possible but figuring out what events were amplified by Climate Change is likely impossible. Are we going to say next that the tornado outbreak in April was also related to Climate Change? When someone attributes a specific event to climate change, it really dilutes their credibility. I can understand using it as a general rule that weather events will get more extreme as the climate changes more and more but again, linking specific events seems pretty silly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergent Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 Besides, if you have any hope at all of getting an argument of yours through to someone else, you need to know where they're coming from. What may be a slam-dunk argument for you could just be a rubber ball bouncing off a concrete wall when used on someone else. So it's something that I do think about, off and on - the question of the manner in which some people reach the conclusion that climate change is bunk.... Seeing things such as this, then - weather patterns at the mercy of air currents, cities paralyzed by forces of nature - is it any wonder that some people have trouble accepting the notion that humanity is a prime influencer of the climate? I think that the "skeptics" have a similar problem to people who can't accept evolution.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120119133926.htm"What we found is that intuitive cognition has a significant impact on what people end up accepting, no matter how much they know," said Haury. The results show that even students with greater knowledge of evolutionary facts weren't likelier to accept the theory, unless they also had a strong "gut" feeling about those facts.If this is so, what would it take to change their gut feelings? Is there any point to debating with them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 In order to attirbute an extreme weather event to climate change (in either direction), one must be able to present provable evidence that such an event has a. never happened in the past and b. would never have happened had it not been for climate change. The weather history of the Pacific Northwest shows that events such as recently happened HAVE happened in the past and before actual change in the Earth's mean temperature had occurred so evidence linking same to climate change is lacking. This was an extreme weather event that they get on occasion-nothing more, nothing less. It could possible very well that we might see more extremes in weather due to climate change but this is not going to be easy to prove particularly until we get a complete handle on the entire climate system and the variability that goes along with it. It's easy to pick one aspect of a complex system and declare that this is the cause of it all but quite another to prove it. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WeatherRusty Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 In order to attirbute an extreme weather event to climate change (in either direction), one must be able to present provable evidence that such an event has a. never happened in the past and b. would never have happened had it not been for climate change. The weather history of the Pacific Northwest shows that events such as recently happened HAVE happened in the past and before actual change in the Earth's mean temperature had occurred so evidence linking same to climate change is lacking. This was an extreme weather event that they get on occasion-nothing more, nothing less. It could possible very well that we might see more extremes in weather due to climate change but this is not going to be easy to prove particularly until we get a complete handle on the entire climate system and the variability that goes along with it. It's easy to pick one aspect of a complex system and declare that this is the cause of it all but quite another to prove it. Steve I disagree with the premise you make here. The scientific arguement is not that certain events have not occured or would not have happened absent climate change. The argument is that climate change alters the probability of events occuring. Climate change is not a weather making precursor. It represents the average of weather. As the global climate generally warms and weather patterns shift, variability of weather will change for any given area. Even if we do not know exactly how this will play out, the average weather experienced will be somewhat different, simply because the makers of weather, ie. temperature, humidity, winds, jet streams, lapse rates, ocean temps, terrain etc are on the move and interacting differently on average.. The weather we get is not independent of the changing setup. You can't take the weather out of the climate any more than you can separate the climate from its weather. One does not exist without the other. A changing climate is changing weather. Probabilities change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FPizz Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 In order to attirbute an extreme weather event to climate change (in either direction), one must be able to present provable evidence that such an event has a. never happened in the past and b. would never have happened had it not been for climate change. The weather history of the Pacific Northwest shows that events such as recently happened HAVE happened in the past and before actual change in the Earth's mean temperature had occurred so evidence linking same to climate change is lacking. This was an extreme weather event that they get on occasion-nothing more, nothing less. It could possible very well that we might see more extremes in weather due to climate change but this is not going to be easy to prove particularly until we get a complete handle on the entire climate system and the variability that goes along with it. It's easy to pick one aspect of a complex system and declare that this is the cause of it all but quite another to prove it. Steve Very well said. Extreme weather events happen. Just because they are rare doesn't mean it is because of a changing climate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SVT450R Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salbers Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 Very well said. Extreme weather events happen. Just because they are rare doesn't mean it is because of a changing climate. If the extreme events become less rare, then climate would be helping them to occur. One example is that warmer air holds more moisture. Yet insolation and evaporation remain about the same. Hence we get about the same total precip while it can come down in more concentrated amounts. Hence more floods and droughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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