Extreme is the New Normal

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Kim OHara
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Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Kim OHara »

Hi, everyone,
I wrote this for a different group of people but when I mentioned it in another thread, someone expressed an interest in seeing it here.
It's pretty long for DW but here goes!
:namaste:
Kim

Extreme is the new Normal
The headlines have been coming at us every week for a few years now, it seems: Hottest Ever … Record Floods … Highest on Record … Coldest Winter … Record-breaking Drought … and on they go. A vague concern that there are too many of them is certainly justifiable, since extreme events shouldn’t be frequent events: anything that happens often ought, by definition, to be normal. So what’s going on?
Putting it as simply as possible, our idea of ‘normal’ weather is our accumulated experience of weather over thirty or more years - depending on our age! - but weather over thirty or more years is climate, and the climate is changing.
I have been recommending the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s ‘Climate Trend Maps’ (http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/ ... ndmaps.cgi) to people ever since I discovered them. Visiting the site gives you immediate, graphic, images of the changes which have been occurring in our climate since 1900.
The site lets users select variables (rainfall or temperature) and look at the way they have changed over the last hundred years. Click on ‘Annual Rainfall’ for any period since 1900 and a trend jumps out at you: the whole East coast and the extreme South of Western Australia (yes, that is where about 22 of our 22.5 million people live) is getting drier. Looking at different timeframes, you find that the change has been speeding up: the average annual rainfall in Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne has decreased by more than 50 mm per decade over the last forty years. Look at average temperature, and almost the whole map turns red - the only areas that have cooled are little spots in the desert around Kununurra.
Look at North Queensland’s weather on a seasonal basis and you will see that our summers and autumns are drier but winters and spring a little wetter - though not enough to make up for the wet season decrease. Our temperatures are up, just a little, right across the board: annual average and all seasonal averages.
What about the rest of the world? There is a global version of the Trend maps at http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/c ... ndmaps.cgi but it doesn’t show much detail. Let’s look at an overview from one of the world’s biggest climate monitoring agencies instead.
According to NOAA scientists (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories201 ... stats.html), "2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year of the global surface temperature record, beginning in 1880. This was the 34th consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th century average." The NOAA summary goes on to say:
NOAA wrote:• 2010 was the wettest year on record, in terms of global average precipitation. As with any year, precipitation patterns were highly variable from region to region.
• The Arctic Sea Ice had a record long growing season, with the annual maximum occurring at the latest date, since records began in 1979. Despite the shorter-than-normal melting season, the Arctic still reached its third smallest annual sea ice minimum on record behind 2007 and 2008.
• A negative Arctic Oscillation (AO) in January and February helped usher in very cold Arctic air to much of the Northern Hemisphere. Record cold and major snowstorms with heavy accumulations occurred across much of eastern North America, Europe and Asia. The February AO index reached -4.266, the largest negative anomaly since records began in 1950.
• From mid-June to mid-August, an unusually strong jet stream shifted northward of western Russia while plunging southward into Pakistan. The jet stream remained locked in place for weeks, bringing an unprecedented two-month heat wave to Russia and contributing to devastating floods in Pakistan at the end of July.
One of the climatologists’ general predictions for what happens when CO2 builds up in the atmosphere is the obvious one, that the Earth as a whole warms up: Global Warming. Accompanying that, however, is that local climate will change by far more than just getting a bit warmer: Climate Change, regionally, will be complex and not all in one direction. As well, weather events will become more extreme. The NOAA summary mentioned a few of last year’s events, but the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat ... spms1.html) puts it more generally:
IPCC wrote:Human influences have:
very likely contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century
likely contributed to changes in wind patterns, affecting extra-tropical storm tracks and temperature patterns
likely increased temperatures of extreme hot nights, cold nights and cold days
more likely than not increased risk of heat waves, area affected by drought since the 1970s and frequency of heavy precipitation events.
That’s directly from AR4, published in 2007 and based on research up to about 2005. Worryingly, all the newer research shows that impacts are greater and arriving earlier than predicted.
If the climate is changing, our accumulated experience of weather over our lifetime misleads us.
We think, ‘Fifty years ago when I was a kid it never rained in summer, forty years ago when I was a teenager it never rained in summer, thirty years ago when my kids were little it never rained in summer, so this year’s wet summer is weird and isn’t likely to happen again.’ But climate change means our best guide to next summer’s weather is the 1990s and 2000s weather, not the 1950s and 60s. The same goes for all our other climate-related expectations - fruit tree flowering, bird migrations and the like.
And that’s why we’re seeing all those headlines now. It is impossible to point to a single weather event, whether it’s a flood or a drought, a hailstorm or a cyclone, and say, ‘That is due to global warming,’ but it is certainly possible to point to a whole cluster of extreme events and say, ‘These are due partly to global warming.’
Like it or not, extreme is the new normal.
And if we don’t like it, we know who to blame.
Individual
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Individual »

It can result in milder weather in some places and times too, though. I do believe in anthropogenic global-warming, but the above seems like left-wing fear-mongering and guilt-tripping.

What's the point of blame?
The best things in life aren't things.

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nathan
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by nathan »

I've lived in the north west pacific, on the British Columbia coast for over 25 years. I've spent most of the last 17 years in the northern reaches of Vancouver Island. Here inside the northern temperate rain forest it rains almost constantly; trees, rocks, buildings and everything else is almost constantly wet and dripping with water. In no small part this is because of the forest cover. The forest canopy contains moisture both within the soil and under the tree canopy and this moisture continually condenses into fog and further into low hanging cloud banks which again deposit rainwater onto the islands and coastline. These phenomena are also continually refreshed by the continual influx of more cloud cover and more precipitation carried from west to east on the jet stream from the expanses of the pacific ocean and kept fluid by the temperate nature of the vast body of open sea water. The marginally cooler air above land masses further condenses and lowers the moisture passing above and the water precipitates onto the land.

Australia is, relatively speaking a desert, and likely, although Australians would know best, human activities have done little to ameliorate this and likely have only contributed to the overall desertification of the land. It is very difficult to restore deserts to moisture bearing lands but it is relatively very easy to turn near deserts into full blown deserts with very little effort. So it goes.

As for the nature of global climate overall, the words that tend to stand out in any of my similar reading have been 'since record keeping began', typically no more than 50 to 100 years. Contrasted with the estimated four billion years that the earth various climates have been arising and passing, changing and shifting, recent events, as dramatic as these may appear, are relatively mild in contrast with some of the known and studied evidences of past extremes. Given that seasonal temperature shifts as slight as 4 degrees and precipitation changes as small as a few inches are sufficient to put an end to the productivity many important crops on much of the worlds arable lands this is no small concern for human beings but in the greater context of the planet's geological and climatological history such shifts are almost insignificant. If an understanding of all of this contributes little to a more realistic assessment of the significance of human life in the overall scheme of things on this planet then I'm not surprised, an extremely myopic and short term view of the overall context is completely typical of all organic lifeforms.
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
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kirk5a
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by kirk5a »

There's a great series called "How the Earth Was Made" ... (I think that's where I saw this) in one episode it showed that in the ancient past, the entire earth froze completely over and nearly lead to complete extinction of all life forms. But life was saved by volcanic activity.

Which says nothing against human caused climate change, I can totally see that being possible. Especially when flying across country. Just about every scrap of earth has been worked over. This has to have effects.

But anyway, it's pretty amazing to think about the vast changes the earth has gone through. Humans are just a blip. Someday Manhattan will welded to another continent and covered in a mile of ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"When one thing is practiced & pursued, ignorance is abandoned, clear knowing arises, the conceit 'I am' is abandoned, latent tendencies are uprooted, fetters are abandoned. Which one thing? Mindfulness immersed in the body." -AN 1.230
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

Be very careful with extremely short term temperature graphs. We are still closer to Ice age than the real global warming. There is no scientific proof whatsoever that humans have any significant impact on temperature. I can post more if anyone is interested.

See the pics. We are almost at the coldest period of time within the past billions of years. I would love global warming to occur as -20C (-4 F) sucks.

Human car pollution accounts to almost 0% effect. Nature is 100x more powerful at warming or cooling than humans are. GW is a new religion based on femotions rather than scientific acts.

CO2 (Carbon dioxide) peaked at 7000ppm during Cambrian, ~17x the today's amount
CO2 Dec 10, 2010 = 389.69 ppm.
For most of the time when dinosaurs have existed the CO2 levels were between 1000 and 2000 ppm. 3-6x the current levels.


OH MY GOD! CO2 was at 389.69 ppm Dec 10, 2010. Doomsday!!! CO2 was as high as 7000 during Cambrian.
http://co2now.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Lets read what some say:
"Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the chief greenhouse gas that results from human activities and causes global warming and climate change. "
http://co2now.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Alex: Did dinosaurs drive cars? What caused CO2 levels to be 3-17 times bigger than today during past 600 million years?

Maybe there were advanced civilization in the past that drove much more cars (millions of years ago) than we do today?


What level is safe? The upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 parts per million (ppm). Atmospheric CO2 levels have stayed higher than 350 ppm since early 1988. http://co2now.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The advance life existed quite fine for millions of years when atmospheric CO2 was much larger than 1000 ppm. 1000ppm is almost 3 times greater than 350 ppm.





Average global temperature often stayed at ~20C for millions of years.
Today it is ~12C.

co2-levels-over-time1.jpg
co2-levels-over-time1.jpg (96.06 KiB) Viewed 5795 times
global-temp-chart-2500bc-2040ad.gif
global-temp-chart-2500bc-2040ad.gif (117.86 KiB) Viewed 5795 times

Addition:
...CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Last edited by Alex123 on Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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cooran
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by cooran »

Hello Kim, all,

2010 officially the hottest year ever
Last year ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998.
The UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has confirmed 2010 was the warmest year on record, verifying a "significant" long-term trend of global warming.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... 117825.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with metta
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
---It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---
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Kim OHara
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Kim OHara »

Individual wrote: What's the point of blame?
Hi, Individual,
"We know who to blame" = "It's our own silly fault"
:namaste:
Kim
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Kim OHara
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Kim OHara »

To those who said, basically, the climate has changed before and it's all natural:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... period.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Alex, I'll respond to you at more length when I have a bit more time)
:namaste:
Kim
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

Kim O'Hara,

The climate on earth has been changing for billions of years, and I am not all sure that it was due to humans driving too much for all those millions/billions of years.


- CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) levels were from 7,000 ppm to 1,000pm for ~500 million years.

Life flourished at some of those levels. The current 389.69 ppm level is TINY and all the rise between 315ppm to 389.69 within 50 years is absolutely nothing. A hiccup.

CO2 levels rose from 4,500ppm to 7,000ppm during Cambrian. Where humans driving SUV's ~500 million years ago?

Please note the thousands (4,500 ) vs hundreds of ppm. WHAT CAUSED THOSE LARGE LEVELS that dwarf the "man made" (highly improbably claim) levels?



Also regarding global temperature, NOT CORRELATED TO CO2:

Average temperature stayed ~22C for hundreds of millions of years, prior to modern humanity
Current average temperature : 0.6C ?

So the temperature stayed at 22C for hundreds of millions of years, and now it is at 0.6C, and we talk about global warming? Warming??? !!!


Warming???!!!


Image




Do you understand this? I don't care about 100+ years of data. I would like to see the graphs for 100s of millions of years in order to check the overal picture.
Of course if we only look at 1955-2010 the upward swing may look scary. But if we look at the big picture, it is nothing. A hiccup.
Last edited by Alex123 on Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Ceisiwr »

Alex123 wrote:Kim O'Hara,

The climate on earth has been changing for billions of years, and I am not all sure that it was due to humans driving too much for all those millions/billions of years.


- CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) levels were from 7,000 ppm to 1,000pm for ~500 million years.

Life flourished at some of those levels. The current 389.69 ppm level is TINY and all the rise between 315ppm to 389.69 within 50 years is absolutely nothing. A hiccup.

CO2 levels rose from 4,500ppm to 7,000ppm during Cambrian. Where humans driving SUV's ~500 million years ago?

Please note the thousands (4,500 ) vs hundreds of ppm. WHAT CAUSED THOSE LARGE LEVELS that dwarf the "man made" (highly improbably claim) levels?



Also regarding global temperature, NOT CORRELATED TO CO2:

Average temperature stayed ~22C for hundreds of millions of years, prior to modern humanity/
Current average temperature : 0.6C ?

So the temperature stayd at 22C for hundreds of millions of years, and now it is at 0.6C, and we talk about global warming? Warming??? !!!

Image




Do you understand this? I don't care about 100+ years of data. I would like to see the graphs for 100s of millions of years in order to check the overal picture.
Of course if we only look at 1955-2010 the upward swing may look scary. But if we look at the big picture, it is nothing. A hiccup.


Why trust science and scientists, they have an agenda ;)
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

cooran wrote:Hello Kim, all,

2010 officially the hottest year ever
This has to be taken in perspective. If it is compared to the 100 years of data, it might be. But if compared to larger amount of data, covering millions of years, this is nothing!

Average global temperature stayed around: 22C for hundreds of millions of years, prior to modern humanity.
Current average global temperature : 0.6C

CO2 levels were from 7,000 ppm to 1,000ppm for ~500 million years.
Current levels are 389.69 ppm.

Global average temperature was more than 40 times higher for millions of years vs today.
Global average CO2 levels were 3x-17x higher for millions of years vs today.

I hope that I've made a point. When it comes to data, it is clear. We could debate the validity of it, but that is a different topic.





Of course it is possible that the civilization that existed at those times used a heck more of SUV's than we do today!

This is probably the only argument that I will accept to prove man-made GW and CO2 levels.
alan
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by alan »

It is also possible that you don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

alan wrote:It is also possible that you don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
Please explain. Otherwise your simply attacking me rather than the data. Is that how global warming believers behave? Attack anyone who disagrees with their belief?


Global average temperature was much much higher for millions of years vs today.
Global average CO2 levels were 3x-17x higher for millions of years vs today.


What produced so much CO2 levels (up to 7000 ppm vs current levels at 389.69 ppm) for millions of years?
Perhaps in that ancient civilization everyone drove very inefficient SUV's.

What produced a very strong rise in CO2 levels from 4,500ppm to 7,000ppm during Cambrian (542 to 488.3 million years ago)?

Excessive industrialization and lack of carbon tax, perhaps?
alan
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by alan »

Consider, please, that we are talking about man-made climate change. Data from the past one hundred years are what we need to be looking at, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the globe is experiencing significant overall warming. To deny that is akin to proposing evolution should not be taught in schools because some Bible fanatics find the general idea disagreeable.
Citing numbers from 500 million years ago, when the earth was a completely different place, is irrelevant at best, and purposefully misleading at worse.
saltspring
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by saltspring »

Alex

Did you look at the link Kim provided? I think it might be worth your time, your graphs and figures are irrelevant to what we are currently dealing with which is human induced climate change.

Cheers
Chris
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