Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

[Knobby22]

We haven't got good records for tornadoes over time because they couldn't measure them accurately. Previous scales introduced in the 70s often made them higher rating incorrectly so a new scale was introduced in 2006 which made it harder to rate a tornado at the catastrophic level.

So we can't compare if they are getting larger or not. We will just have to wait.

However EF5 tornadoes are considered rare and are only supposed to occur every 3 years on average.
Since 1999 they have occurred as follows (in USA and Canada):

1999 - 1
2000 - 0
2001 - 0
2002 - 0
2003 - 0
2004 - 0
2005 - 0
2006 - 0
2007 - 8
2008 - 4
2009 - 0
2010 - 0
2011 -1 (the amazing Joplin tornado)
2012 -0
2013 -1 (so far)

The data set is at present too small, so it is really just weather.

 

[Knobby22]

From the "Australian"

Humans contributed to 'Australia's angry hot summer', says study

From: AAP
June 27, 2013 12:38PM


MAN-MADE climate change is likely to have played a role in the "angry" summer Australians endured this year, researchers say.

These types of extreme summers will become even more frequent and severe, the study led by the University of Melbourne shows.

It concluded global warming increased the chances of more "angry" Australian summers by more than five times.

Study co-author David Karoly said the chance of Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide eventually experiencing 50 degree Celsius days "are quite high" due to ongoing climate change.

The study showed with more than 90 per cent confidence that human influences on the atmosphere dramatically increased the likelihood of the extreme 2013 summer.

"This extreme summer is not only remarkable for its record-breaking nature but also because it occurred at a time of weak La Nina to neutral conditions, which generally produces cooler summers," Professor Karoly said.

Dubbed "Australia's angry hot summer" by the Climate Commission, parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia experienced their highest temperatures on record in 2013 and much of the country sweltered through temperatures very much above average, Professor Karoly said.

It was the hottest on observational record.

Lead study author Sophie Lewis said the angry summer had come at a time when cooler summers were most likely to occur.

"These types of extreme summers will become even more frequent and more severe in the future," Dr Lewis said.

The next hottest summer on record occurred in 1998.

Dr Lewis said for the period of 2006 to 2020, modelling showed summers like 1998 would occur once every 16 years when only natural climate forces were at play.

However, when human influences such as greenhouse gases were introduced, they happened almost one every two years.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...ummer-says-study/story-e6frg8y6-1226670816033

 

[basilio]

The Military perspective on the risks posed by Climate Change

Climate change poses grave threat to security, says UK envoy

Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, special representative to foreign secretary, says governments can't afford to wait for 100% certainty


Climate change poses as grave a threat to the UK's security and economic resilience as terrorism and cyber-attacks, according to a senior military commander who was appointed as William Hague's climate envoy this year.

In his first interview since taking up the post, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti said climate change was "one of the greatest risks we face in the 21st century", particularly because it presented a global threat. "By virtue of our interdependencies around the world, it will affect all of us," he said.

He argued that climate change was a potent threat multiplier at choke points in the global trade network, such as the Straits of Hormuz, through which much of the world's traded oil and gas is shipped.

Morisetti left a 37-year naval career to become the foreign secretary's special representative for climate change, and represents the growing influence of hard-headed military thinking in the global warming debate.

The link between climate change and global security risks is on the agenda of the UK's presidency of the G8, including a meeting to be chaired by Morissetti in July that will include assessment of hotspots where climate stress is driving migration.

Morisetti's central message was simple and stark: "The areas of greatest global stress and greatest impacts of climate change are broadly coincidental."

He said governments could not afford to wait until they had all the information they might like. "If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, you'll be in a pretty sticky state," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/30/climate-change-security-threat-envoy

 

[basilio]

You don't want to make claims on single events but the weather in Melbourne has now broken all records since the 1850's.

Melbourne has its warmest start to a year ever with above-average temperatures for each month so far in 2013

Tom Minear
Herald Sun
July 17, 2013 12:12PM


IT’S official: Melbourne has never had a hotter start to a year.

Maximum temperatures have been above average every month in 2013 and Sky News senior meteorologist Tom Saunders said this was a historic streak of warm weather.

“This is no mean feat considering weather data exists for Melbourne back to the 1850s,” Mr Saunders said.

Melbourne’s average temperature has been 22.5 degrees so far this year, significantly above the long-term January to July average of 20 degrees.

Bureau of Meteorology climate meterologist Dr Harvey Stern confirmed the record, which he said exceeded an average temperature of 22.3 degrees for the first half of 2007.

There has been no cold comfort in winter either, with every day in July seeing a maximum temperature higher than the long-term July average of 13.5 degrees.

Melbourne even reached a balmy top of 19.5 degrees on Monday afternoon, six degrees higher than normal.

But this month’s hot streak could come to an end on Saturday with a cold front expected to see the mercury drop to a chilly 11 degrees.

Mr Saunders said the record for Melbourne’s hottest year had been routinely threatened throughout the last decade.

“The unprecedented heat is due to abnormally warm ocean temperatures surrounding Australia which is partly the result of global warming,” Mr Saunders said.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...h-so-far-in-2013/story-fnii5smq-1226680706158

 

[basilio]

Scientists have always been aware of billions of tons of methane locked into the frozen tundra of the Arctic. In the last few years as the Artic has rapidly melted a few of them have started to ask how likely is it that this rapid warming of the Artic will massively destabilize the methane and basically cause an uncontrollable increase in global temperatures. (methane traps 20 times more energy as a greenhouse gas than CO2).

Latest research is not encouraging. Some excellent Q and A responses in the story.

Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist

Professor Peter Wadhams, co-author of new Nature paper on costs of Arctic warming, explains the danger of inaction

A new paper in the journal Nature argues that the release of a 50 Gigatonne (Gt) methane pulse from thawing Arctic permafrost could destabilise the climate system and trigger costs as high as the value of the entire world's GDP. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf's (ESAS) reservoir of methane gas hydrates could be released slowly over 50 years or "catastrophically fast" in a matter of decades – if not even one decade – the researchers said.

Not everyone agrees that the paper's scenario of a catastrophic and imminent methane release is plausible. Nasa's Gavin Schmidt has previously argued that the danger of such a methane release is low, whereas scientists like Prof Tim Lenton from Exeter University who specialises in climate tipping points, says the process would take thousands if not tens of thousands of years, let alone a decade.

But do most models underestimate the problem? A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) projects that the Arctic will be ice free in September by around 2054-58. This, however, departs significantly from empirical observations of the rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice which is heading for disappearance within two or three years according to Nature co-author and renowned Arctic expert Prof Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar ocean physics group at Cambridge University.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environme...4/arctic-ice-free-methane-economy-catastrophe

 

[Knobby22]

When was the article released? I can't see a date.

That is the worse case scenario, most scientists think it won't happen that quickly, unfortunately they have been too conservative before. If it gets released in one decade - look out world.

 

[basilio]

When was the article released? I can't see a date.

That is the worse case scenario, most scientists think it won't happen that quickly, unfortunately they have been too conservative before. If it gets released in one decade - look out world.

Actually this has just been released in a paper in Nature.

The scientists who specialize in the study of methane in the frozen tundra and as frozen methane hydrates have been extremely concerned about the risk of these escaping as a giant burp. If this does happen as a result of warming we will see an extremely rapid rise in global temperatures.

Other climate scientists have downgraded this risk but the reality is they don't seem to have as much understanding of the issue as the particular specialists.

But hey .. who really wants to be told we are on the edge of a irrevocable catastrophe ?

It did happen in the past.

http://www.livescience.com/15168-embargoed-methane-burst-cleared-dinos.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

 

[burglar]

... But hey .. who really wants to be told we are on the edge of a irrevocable catastrophe ?

It did happen in the past. ...

If it happened in the past, how is it irrevocable?


Irrevocable=
"Unable to cancel or recall; that which is
unalterable or irreversible."

 

[Calliope]

But hey .. who really wants to be told we are on the edge of a irrevocable catastrophe ?

Im afraid your irrevocable catastrophe will be made redundant by the SUPERBUG.

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs are now being found in food and, in some countries, drinking water, while doctors are warning that we're approaching the time when even the most toxic of antibiotics won't be able to kill some bugs.

Not Bold...but your ABC and even your favourite newspaper The Guardian

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3810324.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/11/superbugs-antibiotics-bacterial-diseases-infections

 

[basilio]

Well it happened alright. Global Temperatures shot up and there were mass extinctions of life . But of course after a couple of millon years things settled down and new species evolved.

As for us. It shouldn't be too much of a problem. Don't think it will affect the footy.

Methane clathrates and climate change
Main article: Clathrate gun hypothesis

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 7 years, methane has a global warming potential of 62 over 20 years and 21 over 100 years (IPCC, 1996; Berner and Berner, 1996; vanLoon and Duffy, 2000). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
https://sites.google.com/site/thepaleoceneeocenethermalmaxim/

 

[sptrawler]

Well it happened alright. Global Temperatures shot up and there were mass extinctions of life . But of course after a couple of millon years things settled down and new species evolved.

At least it will bring an end to the debate.

 

[basilio]

Im afraid your irrevocable catastrophe will be made redundant by the SUPERBUG.



Not Bold...but your ABC and even your favourite newspaper The Guardian

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3810324.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/11/superbugs-antibiotics-bacterial-diseases-infections

Well actually the "silver lining" in this possible human catastrophe is that the decimation of billions of people could help reverse global warming.

This seems to have occurred in Medieval Europe after the Black Death reduced the population by a third. Whole regions ended up as forests again because of the wiping out of many rural populations. This seemed to be part of a change in climate that pulled CO2 from the atmosphere and reduce temperatures.

But wouldn't be the best way of achieving a CO2 reduction would it ?

http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_me.html

 

[Calliope]

But wouldn't be the best way of achieving a CO2 reduction would it ?

No... not a patch on taxing emissions.

 

[medicowallet]

Well actually the "silver lining" in this possible human catastrophe is that the decimation of billions of people could help reverse global warming.

This seems to have occurred in Medieval Europe after the Black Death reduced the population by a third. Whole regions ended up as forests again because of the wiping out of many rural populations. This seemed to be part of a change in climate that pulled CO2 from the atmosphere and reduce temperatures.


http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_me.html

I almost choked on my Chocolate Truffle, I laughed so hard at this.

Seriously this is the funniest quote I have ever read on ASF.

I sincerely thank you for this, can I have permission to use it?

MW

 

[wayneL]

I love it too medico.

The green nutters long for mass reduction in population.... just so long as it's not them eh?

 

[sails]

This was in the Guardian in 2009 - and yet I don't believe we have warmed much, if anything, in the last four years. Scaremongering as an excuse to tax the people?




http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...comments/scientists_talking_about_no_warming/

 

[basilio]

I almost choked on my Chocolate Truffle, I laughed so hard at this.

Seriously this is the funniest quote I have ever read on ASF.

I sincerely thank you for this, can I have permission to use it?

MW

That was a very dark comment wasn't it. Perhaps that's why the "silver lining" was in quotation marks maybe ?

But as we all know on ASF nothing that bad could ever happen to us could it. We are just too smart, too rich and too important to be seriously hurt.

 

[basilio]

It's interesting to observe the reactions of some posters to my comments about what happened to the climate as a result of the Black Death.

The mass return of forests in many parts of Europe did result in a reduction of CO2 and was part of the reason for the downturn in temperatures. I thought there were enough clues in my comments to make it clear I didn't think that mass human deaths was any way to reverse global warming but ... apparently not.

 

[sydboy007]

It's interesting to observe the reactions of some posters to my comments about what happened to the climate as a result of the Black Death.

The mass return of forests in many parts of Europe did result in a reduction of CO2 and was part of the reason for the downturn in temperatures. I thought there were enough clues in my comments to make it clear I didn't think that mass human deaths was any way to reverse global warming but ... apparently not.

Don't let the science get in the way of belief

I believe there was a drop in rice production in Asia at roughly the same time - historians seem to think the black plague started in central Asia / China and made it's way to Europe and the middle east. It wiped out roughly 20% of the worlds population. it took Europe 150 years to rebuild their populations.

So I don't find it too hard to believe that the major reduction in farming - known to release a lot of CO2, with rice farming releasing a lot of methane - and reforestation would cause a rapid drop in atmospheric CO2 levels.

Go read about the Anasazi Indians and how they turned a fertile landscape into a huge dessert within a few hundred years, leading to the collapse of their society. A number of early human civilisations degraded and change their environments so much that their societies collapsed.

 

[Calliope]

Go read about the Anasazi Indians and how they turned a fertile landscape into a huge dessert

A huge pudding...yummy.