2014 Climate Action Network Position Statement

20 Powerful Photos That Show The Severe Reality Of Climate Change Today

20 Powerful Photos That Show The Severe Reality Of Climate Change Today
17 August, 2013 themetapicture.com

Climate change is already beginning to transform life on Earth. Around the globe, seasons are shifting, temperatures are climbing and sea levels are rising. Climate change may seem complicated or like a far-away thing that doesn’t matter to your daily life but it does. The images below do a pretty good job of showing what’s going on with our world.

Take a look at what we’re dealing with.
1.) Drought – Lake Powell, Arizona/Utah

2.) Fires – California

3.) Flood – Cambodia

4.) Typhoon – Philippines

5.) Mass Fish Death – Indonesia

6.) Glacier Calving – Antarctica

7.) Lake Change – New Mexico

8.) Fire – Colorado

9.) Lake Change – Iraq

10.) Lake Change – Lake Meade, Nevada

11.) Deforestation – Kenya

12.) Flood – Uganda

13.) Ice Melt – Ecuador

14.) Ice Shelf Calving – Antarctica

15.) Drought – California

16.) Deforestation – Argentina

17.) Glacier Melt – Chile

18.) Lake Change – Argentina

19.) Deforestation – Brazil

20.) Glacier Melt – Arctic Circle



Let’s start acting like we care about what kind of planet we’re leaving to our kids. We need to do our best to help keep the environment healthy and not further damage this beautiful world we were given.

The Alarming Science Behind Climate Change's Increasingly Wild Weather: ...

Hottest Spring On Record Globally, Reports Japan Meteorological Agency

Hottest Spring On Record Globally, Reports Japan Meteorological Agency
JOE ROMM, JUNE 18, 2014 thinkprogress.org

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported Monday that March-May was the hottest in more than 120 years of record-keeping. It was also the hottest May on record.

This is especially noteworthy because we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records.

You may be wondering how the world is setting records for the warmest March, April, and May (the boreal spring) when it wasn’t particularly hot in the United States (assuming we ignore California and Alaska). It turns out there’s like a whole planet out there that has been getting very toasty:

The Siberian permafrost, for instance, has seen relatively sweltering temperatures. And that’s not good news since carbon emissions from the permamelt could add up to 1.5°F to total global warming by 2100 depending on how fast it defrosts.

The JMA is a World Meteorological Organization Regional Climate Center of excellence. In the coming days we will get reports from NASA and NOAA on May and spring temperatures. At this point, it looks like spring 2014 will be the second hottest on record in the NASA dataset and first or second for NOAA.

UPDATE 6/18: As expected, NASA reported that this was the hottest May on record (after reporting last month was the hottest April on record) — and the second hottest spring on record. NASA did point out on its website that some “missing data” from China meant their report was still preliminary. Given the unprecedented heat wave hitting much of China in May, that seems unlikely to change NASA’s final numbers much.

It seems all but certain more records will be broken in the coming months, as global warming combines with an emerging El Niño.

Historic Ocean Climate Link Revealed

Research vessel JOIDES Resolution arriving Lisbon after the IODP Expedition 339

Historic Ocean Climate Link Revealed
14.06.2014

Scientists have discovered a relationship between climate change and ocean currents over the past six million years after analysing an area of the Atlantic near the Strait of Gibraltar, according to research published on Friday, 13 June in the journal Science.

An expedition of scientists, jointly led by Dr Javier Hernandez-Molina, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, examined core samples from the seabed off the coast of Spain and Portugal which provided proof of shifts of climate change over millions of years.

The team also discovered new evidence of a deep-earth tectonic pulse in the region, as well as thick layers of sand within mountains of mud in a vast sheet, spreading out nearly 100km into the Atlantic from the Gibraltar gateway. The quantity of sand is far more than was expected and has been caused by the strength, speed and long duration of bottom currents flowing through the Strait of Gibraltar from the Mediterranean.

“The sediments we examined show various shifts of climate change over millions of years”, Dr Hernandez-Molina said. “In addition, our findings could herald a significant shift in future targets for oil and gas exploration in deep-water settings. The thickness, extent and properties of these sands make them an ideal target in places where they are buried deep enough to allow for the trapping of hydrocarbons. The sand is especially clean and well sorted and therefore very porous and permeable.”

The expedition, carrying an international team of 35 scientists from 14 countries, recovered 5km of core samples from an area along the Gulf of Cadiz and west of Portugal.

The research found that a powerful cascade of Mediterranean water spilling into the Atlantic was scouring the rocky seafloor, carving deep-sea channels and building up mountains of mud. This is due to Mediterranean water being saltier than the Atlantic and therefore denser, causing it to plunge downwards.

Dr Hernandez-Molina added: “We set out to understand how the Strait of Gibraltar acted first as a barrier and then a gateway over the past six million years. The fascinating results we came back with have hugely increased our understanding of the Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) that flows through the Gibraltar gateway and have led to some key discoveries about the relationship between climatic shifts, deep-water circulation and plate tectonic events over a huge timescale.”

Sediments cored along the southwestern Iberian margin during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 339 provide constraints on Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) circulation patterns from the Pliocene epoch to the present day. After the Strait of Gibraltar opened (5.33 million years ago), a limited volume of MOW entered the Atlantic. Depositional hiatuses indicate erosion by bottom currents related to higher volumes of MOW circulating into the North Atlantic, beginning in the late Pliocene. The hiatuses coincide with regional tectonic events and changes in global thermohaline circulation (THC). This suggests that MOW influenced Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), THC, and climatic shifts by contributing a component of warm, saline water to northern latitudes while in turn being influenced by plate tectonics.

Onset of Mediterranean outflow into the North Atlantic by F. Javier Hernández-Molina, et al. published in Science 13 June 2014: Vol. 344 no. 6189 pp. 1244-1250 DOI: 10.1126/science.1251306
Read the abstract and get the paper here.
News release issued by Royal Holloway College via AlphaGalileo here.

Dr. Mike Aucott, Climate Change: Seeing Through The Nonsense; Getting Beyond the Hopelessness

Dr. Mike Aucott, Climate Change: Seeing Through The Nonsense; Getting Beyond the Hopelessness.
Published on May 18, 2014
Dr. Mike Aucott spoke at The Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing "UUCWC" at Titusville, NJ on May 12, 2014. Climate Change: Seeing Through the Nonsense; Getting Beyond the Hopelessness.

DR. Aucott http://www.dezinefusion.com/stevens/i... spoke for almost 55 minutes alongside presenting over 80+ informative slides that are shown in this video. Dr. Aucott gives us a convincing presentation for the evidence that humans are impacting climate both globally and locally in NJ. As per the presentation name, Dr. Aucott helps us to understand in both layman and technical terms how we are impacting our environment and ways we can make a difference, especially in his belief that we can have a real impact in controlling Greenhouse Gases through the creation of a Carbon Tax.

The event was sponsored by UUCWC Congregation!Climate!Action!Team http://uucwccat.blogspot.com/Please contact uucwc.cat@gmail.com for more information

Dr. Mike Aucott has a Ph.D. in environmental sciences from Rutgers University, and works with NJDEP's Division of Science, Research, & Technology. His work includes development of inventories of New Jersey emissions of greenhouse gases and researching potential impacts of climate change on the State. He currently heads up the Trends Team, which is responsible for development and regular updating of measurements and related trends relevant to the condition of the environment in New Jersey. He was a scientist for 27 years with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where his research included greenhouse gas emission inventories, air pollution, and energy use.

Resource Sites:

• http://www.ipcc.ch/
• http://www.realclimate.org/
• http://www.skepticalscience.com/
• http://citizensclimatelobby.org/
• http://www.carbontax.org/
• http://pandoraspromise.com/

Chasing Ice (Arabic sub)

Chasing Ice (Arabic sub)

Something Is Seriously Wrong on the East Coast - and It's Killing All the Baby Puffins

Ustream

Something Is Seriously Wrong on the East Coast—and It's Killing All the Baby Puffins
Disappearing puffins, stray whales, invading sailfish: The North Atlantic is in a bad way. Here's why.

Rowan Jacobsen motherjones.com

THE NEW POSTER CHILD for climate change had his coming-out party in June 2012, when Petey the puffin chick first went live into thousands of homes and schools all over the world. The "Puffin Cam" capturing baby Petey's every chirp had been set up on Maine's Seal Island by Stephen Kress, "The Puffin Man," who founded the Audubon Society's Project Puffin in 1973. Puffins, whose orange bills and furrowed eyes make them look like penguins dressed as sad clowns, used to nest on many islands off the Maine coast, but 300 years of hunting for their meat, eggs, and feathers nearly wiped them out. Project Puffin transplanted young puffins from Newfoundland to several islands in Maine, and after years of effort the colonies were reestablished and the project became one of Audubon's great success stories. By 2013, about 1,000 puffin pairs were nesting in Maine.

Now, thanks to a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, the Puffin Cam offered new opportunities for research and outreach. Puffin parents dote on their single chick, sheltering it in a two-foot burrow beneath rocky ledges and bringing it piles of small fish each day. Researchers would get to watch live puffin feeding behavior for the first time, and schoolkids around the world would be falling for Petey.

But Kress soon noticed that something was wrong. Puffins dine primarily on hake and herring, two teardrop-shaped fish that have always been abundant in the Gulf of Maine. But Petey's parents brought him mostly butterfish, which are shaped more like saucers. Kress watched Petey repeatedly pick up butterfish and try to swallow them. The video is absurd and tragic, because the butterfish is wider than the little gray fluff ball, who keeps tossing his head back, trying to choke down the fish, only to drop it, shaking with the effort. Petey tries again and again, but he never manages it. For weeks, his parents kept bringing him butterfish, and he kept struggling. Eventually, he began moving less and less. On July 20, Petey expired in front of a live audience. Puffin snuff.

"When he died, there was a huge outcry from viewers," Kress tells me. "But we thought, 'Well, that's nature.' They don't all live. It's normal to have some chicks die." Puffins successfully raise chicks 77 percent of the time, and Petey's parents had a good track record; Kress assumed they were just unlucky. Then he checked the other 64 burrows he was tracking: Only 31 percent had successfully fledged. He saw dead chicks and piles of rotting butterfish everywhere. "That," he says, "was the epiphany."

Why would the veteran puffin parents of Maine start bringing their chicks food they couldn't swallow? Only because they had no choice. Herring and hake had dramatically declined in the waters surrounding Seal Island, and by August, Kress had a pretty good idea why: The water was much too hot.

Karen Minot

ON A MAP, the Gulf of Maine looks like an unremarkable bulge of the North Atlantic, but it is unique. A submerged ridge between Cape Cod and the tip of Nova Scotia turns it into a nearly self-contained bowl. Warm water surging up the East Coast glances off those banks and heads for Europe, bypassing the Gulf of Maine and leaving it shockingly cold. (I'm looking at you, Old Orchard Beach!) Meanwhile, frigid, nutrient-rich water from off the coasts of Labrador and Nova Scotia feeds into the Gulf through a deep channel and gets sucked into the powerful counterclockwise currents. Whipped by that vortex, and churned by the largest tides in the world (52 feet in one bay), the Gulf of Maine acts like a giant blender, constantly whisking nutrients up off the bottom, where they generally settle. At the surface, microscopic plants called phytoplankton combine those nutrients with the sunlight of the lengthening spring days to reproduce like mad. That's how the thick, green soup that feeds the Gulf's food web gets made. The soup is so cold that its diversity is low, but the cold-water specialists that are adapted to it do incredibly well.

At least, they used to.

Like much of the country, the Northeast experienced the warmest March on record in 2012, and the year just stayed hot after that. Records weren't merely shattered; they were ground into dust. Temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, which has been warming faster than almost any other marine environment on Earth, shot far higher than anyone had ever recorded, and the place's personality changed. The spring bloom of phytoplankton occurred exceptionally early, before most animals were ready to take advantage of it. Lobsters shifted toward shore a month ahead of schedule, leading to record landings and the lowest prices in 18 years.

Hake and herring, meanwhile, got the hell out of Dodge, heading for cooler waters. In all, at least 14 Gulf of Maine fish species have been shifting northward or deeper in search of relief. That left the puffins little to feed their chicks except butterfish, a more southerly species that has recently proliferated in the Gulf. Butterfish have also been growing larger during the past few years of intense warmth, and that, thinks Stephen Kress, might be a key. "Fish start growing in response to changes in water temperature and food," he says. "The earlier that cycle starts, the bigger they're gonna be. What seems to have happened in 2012 is that the butterfish got a head start on the puffins. If it was a little smaller, the butterfish might actually be a fine meal for a puffin chick. But if it's too big, then it's just the opposite. That's one of the interesting things about climate change. It's the slight nuances that can have huge effects on species."


Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo

LIFE WOULD GO ON without puffins. Unfortunately, these clowns of the sea seem to be the canaries in the western Atlantic coal mine. Their decline is an ominous sign in a system that supports everything from the last 400 North Atlantic right whales to the $2 billion lobster industry.

The next sign of deep weirdness arrived in December 2012, when Florida beachcombers began spotting hundreds of what appeared to be penguins soaring above the Miami surf.They turned out to be razorbills, close relatives of puffins that also call the Gulf of Maine home.

Razorbills should be high on your reincarnation wish list. Superb fliers, they can also plunge into the sea and pursue fish underwater by flapping their wings—while dressed in black tie. James Bond, eat your heart out.

But normally, they do all this in the North Atlantic. Suddenly thousands of them had decided to move to Florida. The consensus was that they had simply kept going in a desperate attempt to find food—and that it couldn't end well for them. It didn't. By early 2013, hundreds of dead razorbills had washed up along East Coast beaches, most emaciated. So did 40 puffins. "That's very rare," Kress says. In fact, finding even a single dead puffin on the beach is unusual. "They're tough little guys! They'll live 30 years or more."

The weirdness continued. In the spring of 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made its semiannual trawl survey of the Gulf of Maine, dragging a net at dozens of points throughout the Gulf and counting, weighing, and measuring everything caught. There were plenty of butterfish and mountains of spiny dogfish, a small shark that used to be relatively rare in the Gulf of Maine but now owns the place. There were very few cod, the fish that made New England, that lured thousands of fishing boats from Europe, that fed millions of people over the centuries. NOAA slashed the 2013 quota for cod to a pittance, putting hundreds of enraged fishermen out of work.

In recent history, the average ocean surface temperature of the Gulf of Maine has hovered around 44 degrees Fahrenheit. 2013 was the second-warmest year in the Gulf in three decades, with an average surface temperature of 46.6 degrees. But it was nowhere near the freakish spike to 47.5 degrees in 2012, and the phytoplankton did not repeat its crazy early bloom. Instead, it didn't bloom at all. "So poorly developed, its extent was below detection limits" was how NOAA put it in its Ecosystem Advisory, sounding surprisingly calm, considering it was saying the marine equivalent of "No grass sprouted in New England this year." Phytoplankton feeds some tiny fish and shrimp directly, but more often it feeds zooplankton, the bugs of the sea, and these in turn feed everything from herring to whales. The undetectable phytoplankton bloom did not bode well for zooplankton, and sure enough, that spring NOAA broke the grim news: "The biomass of zooplankton was the lowest on record." Even this dirge doesn't do justice to the dramatic deviation from the organisms' historical norm: Their numbers bounced along in a comfortable range for 35 years before taking a gut-wrenching nosedive in 2013.

By the time of that announcement, Project Puffin was starting its 2013 season. With spring temperatures closer to normal, Kress had hoped that his Seal Island puffins would return to their fruitful ways, but only two-thirds of the colony showed up. Still, a new chick was chosen for the Puffin Cam feed, and viewers named her Hope. For a while, all went well. Kress saw fewer butterfish being delivered, and Hope flourished. But soon Kress noticed that fewer birds than usual were hanging out at the Loafing Ledge, a rocky ridge where the parents socialize between feedings. Then he realized that the time between chick feedings was considerably longer than normal. The puffins were having to range much farther to find fish.

Too far, as it turned out. Although Hope successfully fledged on August 21, she was one of the few lucky ones. Only 10 percent of the puffin chicks survived in 2013—the worst year on record. "We've never seen two down years like this," Kress told me. "The puffins really tanked."

And how could they not? The Gulf of Maine, the great food processor of the western Atlantic, was almost out of food.

USUALLY, A SYSTEM as large and complex as the Gulf of Maine, sloshing with natural noise and randomness, will disappoint any human desire to fit it into a tidy narrative. It can take years to tease a clear trend out of the data. But by late 2013, things were so skewed that you could see the canaries dropping everywhere you looked.

November 30: Researchers announced that instead of the dozens of endangered right whales they normally spot in the Gulf of Maine during their fall aerial survey, they had spotted...one. They were quick to note that the whales couldn't all be dead, just missing—probably off in search of food. Sure enough, in January 2014, 12 of the same species of whale were spotted in Cape Cod Bay, where food is more plentiful.

By now, you'll have no trouble filling in this sentence from the December 4 Portland Press Herald: "This summer, a survey indicated that the northern shrimp stock was at its ____ ____ since the annual trawl survey began in 1984." That's right: lowest level. In fact, the sweet Gulf of Maine shrimp—a closely guarded secret in New England—had collapsed so completely that regulators closed the 2014 season and warned of "little prospect of recovery in the near future." It takes shrimp four to five years to reach harvest size, and few of the shrimp born in the Gulf of Maine since 2009 have survived. If shrimp miraculously produce a bumper crop this year, there might be a few to eat in 2018. In the meantime, throw some butterfish on the barbie.

Or maybe sailfish or cobia, two Florida species hooked by bewildered New England anglers in 2013. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute scrambled to find a bright side, publishing a paper (PDF) on the commercial potential of former Virginia standbys like black sea bass, longfin squid, and scup, which are new regulars in the Gulf. Admirable adaptability, and undoubtedly a few quick-moving fishermen will profit from the regime change. But I don't relish life in a world where only the hyperadapters survive.

"A puffin is an excellent example of a specialist bird that is going to be vulnerable to climate change," Kress says. "For a specialist bird like a warbler or a seabird, which relies on a small range of foods but lives in a vast area, if something goes wrong anywhere in the migratory range of that bird, it's in big trouble. And its ability to adapt is less than a bird with a more generalist lifestyle like a gull or a crow. Those highly adaptive birds are going to have the advantage in the long run. We see that vividly with the pictures of Petey trying to wolf down that oversized butterfish. It's scary. But it's a glimpse into a possible future."

Or present. We tend to think of climate change as incremental and inexorable, like seeing old friends age at the annual reunion. There are some new wrinkles, a step has been lost, and you know there's no going back, but at least you can still look forward to years of friendship. But ecosystems are wired with tipping points. A tweak here and there can make things unrecognizable tomorrow. Glaciers melt. Forests ignite. And suddenly your old pal isn't answering her phone anymore.

Yes, we can adapt. Us and the gulls and the rats. But it will be awfully lonely out there.

For 40 years, Stephen Kress has traveled to the same Maine islands each spring, has watched the same puffin couples return year after year to raise their chicks. Now he doesn't know what to think. "I've seen colonies go up and down, and I know one year doesn't make a pattern, but you can't help but wonder. We've worked decades to build those populations up, and in 2013 we lost a third. That's pretty dramatic."

Still, Kress, who calls himself a perennial optimist ("Who else would start Project Puffin?"), will head back out this May, on the heels of this winter's cold snap. He plans to outfit a few birds with GPS devices in hopes of finding the key places where they feed and overwinter. Perhaps there are new refuges to be found, places just a little colder or more resilient, where a puffin can still be a puffin. In May, the Puffin Cam will go live, a new chick will get a new name, and a fresh batch of schoolkids will tune in to get a look at their brave new world.

What We KNOW About Climate Change - Kerry Emanuel

What We KNOW About Climate Change - Kerry Emanuel
Published on Apr 11, 2014

Professor Kerry Emanuel has been known for his "Show me the data!" approach to climate science. In this talk, he will present a long term, evidence-driven view of Earth's climate change, culminating in a discussion of current risks and implications. An extensive audience Q&A will follow the presentation.

Professor Emanuel is an award-winning meteorologist and climate scientist and the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. His research focuses on tropical meteorology and climate, with a specialty in hurricane physics. Emanuel has a PhD from MIT, has been a faculty member since 1981 and has served as the Director of the Center for Meteorology and Physical Oceanography and the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. He is co-founder of the MIT Lorenz Center, which fosters creative approaches to fundamental science devoted to understanding how climate works.

He was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Influential People who Shape Our World in 2006. In 2007, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is an author of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and two books, including What We Know about Climate Change, recently hailed by the NY Times as "... the single best thing written about climate change for a general audience."

Our Year Of Extremes - Climate Change Report

Our Year Of Extremes - Climate Change Report

Published on Apr 16, 2014

Our Year of Extremes
New Climate Change Report Warns of Dire Consequences.The head of the World Bank is warning that climate change will lead to armed conflicts over shortages of food and water. On "Ann Curry Reports: Our Year of Extremes," Curry shows us how people are witnessing the impact of rising global temperatures.

Uploaded under fair use laws. Importance of this message is that news reports of this magnitude need to be distributed throughout the internet without hindrance. years of living dangerously

GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE Infographic

GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE Infographic 

from everythingconnects.org

Global Warming Shrinks China’s Tibetan Plateau Glaciers by 15% in 30yrs

Global Warming Shrinks China’s Tibetan Plateau Glaciers by 15% in 30yrs
Esther Tanquintic-Misa, May 22, 2014 au.ibtimes.com

China's very own glaciers off in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau have shrunk by 15 per cent in the last 30 years because of global warming.

In a report, official state-run media Xinhua News said at least 8,000 square kilometres (3,089 square miles) of glaciers have thinned out in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in western China. This plateau covers the Tibetan Autonomous Region and highland parts of neighbouring provinces.

From a total of 53,000 sq km, glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau are now only 45,000 sq km.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said melting glaciers has accelerated since the 1990s, including the Chinese portion of the Himalayas.

"More and bigger cracks are now being seen in ice on Mount Everest, a sign of rapidly melting glaciers," scientists said.

"As the highest place in the world's mid-latitude regions, the plateau is more likely to be affected by global warming... China has more than 46,000 glaciers, mainly in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. They are a reliable indicator of climate change, and easy for scientists to observe. 

Kang said retreating glaciers have impacted meltwater rivers and led to more glacier-lake outbursts. "It can increase water flow of major rivers in the short term, but in the long run, a continuation of the retreat will eventually deplete the glacial ice and substantially reduce or eliminate runoff," he added," the Shanghai Daily quoted CAS researcher Kang Shichang.

A very evident ill result of the shrinking glaciers have impacted meltwater rivers and led to more glacier-lake outbursts.

Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists

Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists (via Moyers & Company)

Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax. But there’s a more sophisticated set of climate “skeptics” who make arguments that, at least to the lay ear, sound…

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Last month was the second hottest April on record, after April 2010

Last month was the second hottest April on record, after April 2010

Current State of Climate Science Research: What Do We Know and What Else Do We Need to Find Out?

Panel One – Current State of Climate Science Research: What Do We Know and What Else Do We Need to Find Out? 9:00-10:30am
Climate Science and Policy through the Looking Glass
UC Santa Cruz, February 28-March 1, 2014

Moderator: Dean Paul Koch, Division of Physical & Biological Sciences

• Daniel Cayan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

• Jeffrey Kiehl, Earth System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research

• Benjamin D. Santer, Research Scientist, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis & Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Gavin A. Schmidt, NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University

Gavin Schmidt: The emergent patterns of climate change

Gavin Schmidt: The emergent patterns of climate change
Published on May 1, 2014
You can't understand climate change in pieces, says climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. It's the whole, or it's nothing. In this illuminating talk, he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models that illustrate the endlessly complex interactions of small-scale environmental events.

Climate Change as a Perfect Storm

Professor Alden Griffith on Climate Change as a Perfect Storm
Published on Jan 14, 2013
Alden Griffith, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Wellesley College

Global Warming & Climate Change Myths

Global Warming & Climate Change Myths

Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.

	Climate Myth	vs	What the Science Says
1	"Climate's changed before"		Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.
2	"It's the sun"		In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions
3	"It's not bad"		Negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health & environment far outweigh any positives.
4	"There is no consensus"		97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
5	"It's cooling"		The last decade 2000-2009 was the hottest on record.
6	"Models are unreliable"		Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
7	"Temp record is unreliable"		The warming trend is the same in rural and urban areas, measured by thermometers and satellites.
8	"Animals and plants can adapt"		Global warming will cause mass extinctions of species that cannot adapt on short time scales.
9	"It hasn't warmed since 1998"		For global records, 2010 is the hottest year on record, tied with 2005.
10	"Antarctica is gaining ice"		Satellites measure Antarctica losing land ice at an accelerating rate.
11	"Ice age predicted in the 70s"		The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
12	"CO2 lags temperature"		CO2 didn't initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming.
13	"Climate sensitivity is low"		Net positive feedback is confirmed by many different lines of evidence.
14	"We're heading into an ice age"		Worry about global warming impacts in the next 100 years, not an ice age in over 10,000 years.
15	"Ocean acidification isn't serious"		Ocean acidification threatens entire marine food chains.
16	"Hockey stick is broken"		Recent studies agree that recent global temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
17	"Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy"		A number of investigations have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing in the media-hyped email incident.
18	"Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming"		There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.
19	"Al Gore got it wrong"		Al Gore book is quite accurate, and far more accurate than contrarian books.
20	"Glaciers are growing"		Most glaciers are retreating, posing a serious problem for millions who rely on glaciers for water.
21	"It's cosmic rays"		Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.
22	"1934 - hottest year on record"		1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally.
23	"It's freaking cold!"		A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.
24	"Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming"		Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming.
25	"Sea level rise is exaggerated"		A variety of different measurements find steadily rising sea levels over the past century.
26	"It's Urban Heat Island effect"		Urban and rural regions show the same warming trend.
27	"Medieval Warm Period was warmer"		Globally averaged temperature now is higher than global temperature in medieval times.
28	"Mars is warming"		Mars is not warming globally.
29	"Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle"		Thick arctic sea ice is undergoing a rapid retreat.
30	"Increasing CO2 has little to no effect"		The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements.
31	"Oceans are cooling"		The most recent ocean measurements show consistent warming.
32	"It's a 1500 year cycle"		Ancient natural cycles are irrelevant for attributing recent global warming to humans.
33	"Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions"		The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any.
34	"IPCC is alarmist"		Numerous papers have documented how IPCC predictions are more likely to underestimate the climate response.
35	"Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas"		Rising CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which makes global warming much worse.
36	"Polar bear numbers are increasing"		Polar bears are in danger of extinction as well as many other species.
37	"CO2 limits will harm the economy"		The benefits of a price on carbon outweigh the costs several times over.
38	"It's not happening"		There are many lines of evidence indicating global warming is unequivocal.
39	"Greenland was green"		Other parts of the earth got colder when Greenland got warmer.
40	"Greenland is gaining ice"		Greenland on the whole is losing ice, as confirmed by satellite measurement.
41	"CO2 is not a pollutant"		Through its impacts on the climate, CO2 presents a danger to public health and welfare, and thus qualifies as an air pollutant
42	"CO2 is plant food"		The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors
43	"Other planets are warming"		Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly.
44	"Arctic sea ice has recovered"		Thick arctic sea ice is in rapid retreat.
45	"There's no empirical evidence"		There are multiple lines of direct observations that humans are causing global warming.
46	"There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature"		There is long-term correlation between CO2 and global temperature; other effects are short-term.
47	"We're coming out of the Little Ice Age"		Scientists have determined that the factors which caused the Little Ice Age cooling are not currently causing global warming
48	"It cooled mid-century"		Mid-century cooling involved aerosols and is irrelevant for recent global warming.
49	"CO2 was higher in the past"		When CO2 was higher in the past, the sun was cooler.
50	"Global warming stopped in 1998,1995, 2002, 2007,2010, ????"		Global temperature is still rising and 2010 was the hottest recorded.
51	"It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low"		Early 20th century warming is due to several causes, including rising CO2.
52	"Satellites show no warming in the troposphere"		The most recent satellite data show that the earth as a whole is warming.
53	"It's aerosols"		Aerosols have been masking global warming, which would be worse otherwise.
54	"It's El Niño"		El Nino has no trend and so is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
55	"2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells"		A cold day in Chicago in winter has nothing to do with the trend of global warming.
56	"It's a natural cycle"		No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
57	"Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use"		Most glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, notwithstanding a few complicated cases.
58	"There's no tropospheric hot spot"		We see a clear "short-term hot spot" - there's various evidence for a "long-term hot spot".
59	"It's not us"		Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.
60	"It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation"		The PDO shows no trend, and therefore the PDO is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
61	"IPCC were wrong about Himalayan glaciers"		Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report.
62	"Scientists can't even predict weather"		Weather and climate are different; climate predictions do not need weather detail.
63	"Greenhouse effect has been falsified"		The greenhouse effect is standard physics and confirmed by observations.
64	"2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory"		The 2nd law of thermodynamics is consistent with the greenhouse effect which is directly observed.
65	"CO2 limits will hurt the poor"		Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change.
66	"The science isn't settled"		That human CO2 is causing global warming is known with high certainty & confirmed by observations.
67	"Clouds provide negative feedback"		Evidence is building that net cloud feedback is likely positive and unlikely to be strongly negative.
68	"Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated"		Sea level rise is now increasing faster than predicted due to unexpectedly rapid ice melting.
69	"It's the ocean"		The oceans are warming and moreover are becoming more acidic, threatening the food chain.
70	"IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests"		The IPCC statement on Amazon rainforests was correct, and was incorrectly reported in some media.
71	"Corals are resilient to bleaching"		Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year.
72	"Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans"		Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.
73	"CO2 effect is saturated"		Direct measurements find that rising CO2 is trapping more heat.
74	"Greenland ice sheet won't collapse"		When Greenland was 3 to 5 degrees C warmer than today, a large portion of the Ice Sheet melted.
75	"CO2 is just a trace gas"		Many substances are dangerous even in trace amounts; what really matters is the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
76	"It's methane"		Methane plays a minor role in global warming but could get much worse if permafrost starts to melt.
77	"CO2 has a short residence time"		Excess CO2 from human emissions has a long residence time of over 100 years
78	"CO2 measurements are suspect"		CO2 levels are measured by hundreds of stations across the globe, all reporting the same trend.
79	"Humidity is falling"		Multiple lines of independent evidence indicate humidity is rising and provides positive feedback.
80	"500 scientists refute the consensus"		Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
81	"Neptune is warming"		And the sun is cooling.
82	"Springs aren't advancing"		Hundreds of flowers across the UK are flowering earlier now than any time in 250 years.
83	"Jupiter is warming"		Jupiter is not warming, and anyway the sun is cooling.
84	"It's land use"		Land use plays a minor role in climate change, although carbon sequestration may help to mitigate.
85	"Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature"		The 'decline' refers to a decline in northern tree-rings, not global temperature, and is openly discussed in papers and the IPCC reports.
86	"CO2 is not increasing"		CO2 is increasing rapidly, and is reaching levels not seen on the earth for millions of years.
87	"Record snowfall disproves global warming"		Warming leads to increased evaporation and precipitation, which falls as increased snow in winter.
88	"They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'"		'Global warming' and 'climate change' mean different things and have both been used for decades.
89	"Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun"		The sun has not warmed since 1970 and so cannot be driving global warming.
90	"CO2 is coming from the ocean"		The ocean is absorbing massive amounts of CO2, and is becoming more acidic as a result.
91	"IPCC overestimate temperature rise"		Monckton used the IPCC equation in an inappropriate manner.
92	"Pluto is warming"		And the sun has been recently cooling.
93	"CO2 is not the only driver of climate"		Theory, models and direct measurement confirm CO2is currently the main driver of climate change.
94	"Peer review process was corrupted"		An Independent Review concluded that CRU's actions were normal and didn't threaten the integrity of peer review.
95	"Arctic was warmer in 1940"		The actual data show high northern latitudes are warmer today than in 1940.
96	"Renewable energy is too expensive"		When you account for all of the costs associated with burning coal and other fossil fuels, like air pollution and health effects, in reality they are significantly more expensive than most renewable energy sources.
97	"Southern sea ice is increasing"		Antarctic sea ice has grown in recent decades despite the Southern Ocean warming at the same time.
98	"CO2 limits will make little difference"		If every nation agrees to limit CO2 emissions, we can achieve significant cuts on a global scale.
99	"Sea level rise is decelerating"		Global sea level data shows that sea level rise has been increasing since 1880 while future sea level rise predictions are based on physics, not statistics.
100	"It's microsite influences"		Microsite influences on temperature changes are minimal; good and bad sites show the same trend.
101	"Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity"		Lindzen and Choi’s paper is viewed as unacceptably flawed by other climate scientists.
102	"Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995"		Phil Jones was misquoted.
103	"Humans are too insignificant to affect globalclimate"		Humans are small but powerful, and human CO2emissions are causing global warming.
104	"Dropped stations introduce warming bias"		If the dropped stations had been kept, the temperature would actually be slightly higher.
105	"It's too hard"		Scientific studies have determined that current technology is sufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
106	"It's not urgent"		A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points.
107	"It's albedo"		Albedo change in the Arctic, due to receding ice, is increasing global warming.
108	"Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960"		This is a detail that is complex, local, and irrelevant to the observed global warming trend.
109	"It's soot"		Soot stays in the atmosphere for days to weeks; carbon dioxide causes warming for centuries.
110	"Roy Spencer finds negative feedback"		Spencer's model is too simple, excluding important factors like ocean dynamics and treats cloud feedbacks as forcings.
111	"Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong"		Jim Hansen had several possible scenarios; his mid-level scenario B was right.
112	"It's global brightening"		This is a complex aerosol effect with unclear temperature significance.
113	"Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected"		This argument ignores the cooling effect of aerosols and the planet's thermal inertia.
114	"Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea icegain"		Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain.
115	"It's a climate regime shift"		There is no evidence that climate has chaotic “regimes” on a long-term basis.
116	"Solar cycles cause global warming"		Over recent decades, the sun has been slightly cooling & is irrelevant to recent global warming.
117	"Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming"		Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
118	"Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project"		The 'OISM petition' was signed by only a few climatologists.
119	"Ice isn't melting"		Arctic sea ice has shrunk by an area equal to Western Australia, and summer or multi-year sea ice might be all gone within a decade.
120	"IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period"		The IPCC simply updated their temperature history graphs to show the best data available at the time.
121	"Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted"		Weather is chaotic but climate is driven by Earth's energy imbalance, which is more predictable.
122	"It's ozone"		Ozone has only a small effect.
123	"Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored"		An independent inquiry found CRU is a small research unit with limited resources and their rigour and honesty are not in doubt.
124	"Climate 'Skeptics' are like Galileo"		Modern scientists, not anti-science skeptics, follow in Galileo’s footsteps.
125	"The IPCC consensus is phoney"		113 nations signed onto the 2007 IPCC report, which is simply a summary of the current body of climate science evidence
126	"Sea level is not rising"		The claim sea level isn’t rising is based on blatantly doctored graphs contradicted by observations.
127	"A drop in volcanic activity caused warming"		Volcanoes have had no warming effect in recent global warming - if anything, a cooling effect.
128	"Tuvalu sea level isn't rising"		Tuvalu sea level is rising 3 times larger than the global average.
129	"Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed"		Benny Peiser, the Oreskes critic, retracted his criticism.
130	"Renewables can't provide baseload power"		A number of renewable sources already do provide baseload power, and we don't need renewables to provide a large percentage of baseload power immediately.
131	"Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming"		Trenberth is talking about the details of energy flow, not whether global warming is happening.
132	"Ice Sheet losses are overestimated"		A number of independent measurements find extensive ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland.
133	"CRU tampered with temperature data"		An independent inquiry went back to primary datasources and were able to replicate CRU's results.
134	"Melting ice isn't warming the Arctic"		Melting ice leads to more sunlight being absorbed by water, thus heating the Arctic.
135	"Breathing contributes to CO2buildup"		By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with.
136	"Satellite error inflated Great Lakes temperatures"		Temperature errors in the Great Lakes region are not used in any global temperature records.
137	"Soares finds lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature"		Soares looks at short-term trends which are swamped by natural variations while ignoring the long-term correlation.
138	"We're heading into cooling"		There is no scientific basis for claims that the planet will begin to cool in the near future.
139	"Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural"		Multiple lines of evidence make it very clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions.
140	"CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration"		That humans are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2is confirmed by multiple isotopic analyses.
141	"The sun is getting hotter"		The sun has just had the deepest solar minimum in 100 years.
142	"It's waste heat"		Greenhouse warming is adding 100 times more heat to the climate than waste heat.
143	"Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming"		This possibility just means that future global warming could be even worse.
144	"It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940"		The warming trend over 1970 to 2001 is greater than warming from both 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940.
145	"An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature"		CO2 levels are rising so fast that unless we decrease emissions, global warming will accelerate this century.
146	"Record high snow cover was set in winter 2008/2009"		Winter snow cover in 2008/2009 was average while the long-term trend in spring, summer, and annual snow cover is rapid decline.
147	"Mauna Loa is a volcano"		The global trend is calculated from hundreds of CO2 measuring stations and confirmed by satellites.
148	"Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect"		Venus very likely underwent a runaway or ‘moist’ greenhouse phase earlier in its history, and today is kept hot by a dense CO2 atmosphere.
149	"Antarctica is too cold to lose ice"		Glaciers are sliding faster into the ocean because ice shelves are thinning due to warming oceans.
150	"Positive feedback means runaway warming"		Positive feedback won't lead to runaway warming; diminishing returns on feedback cycles limit the amplification.
151	"Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?"		Official records, Editors and emails suggest CRU scientists acted in the spirit if not the letter of IPCC rules.
152	"Water levels correlate withsunspots"		This detail is irrelevant to the observation of global warming caused by humans.
153	"CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician"		The sun was much cooler during the Ordovician.
154	"It's internal variability"		Internal variability can only account for small amounts of warming and cooling over periods of decades, and scientific studies have consistently shown that it cannot account for the global warming over the past century.
155	"CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused"		Many lines of evidence, including simple accounting, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to human fossil fuel burning.
156	"It's CFCs"		CFCs contribute at a small level.
157	"Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising"		The Siddall 2009 paper was retracted because its predicted sea level rise was too low.
158	"Warming causesCO2 rise"		Recent warming is due to rising CO2.
159	"Coral atolls grow as sea levels rise"		Thousands of coral atolls have "drowned" when unable to grow fast enough to survive at sea level.
160	"Renewable energy investment kills jobs"		Investment in renewable energy creates more jobs than investment in fossil fuel energy.
161	"Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass"		Greenland's ice loss is accelerating & will add metres of sea level rise in upcoming centuries.
162	"DMI show cooling Arctic"		While summer maximums have showed little trend, the annual average Arctic temperature has risen sharply in recent decades.
163	"CO2 limits won't cool the planet"		CO2 limits won't cool the planet, but they can make the difference between continued accelerating global warming to catastrophic levels vs. slowing and eventually stopping the warming at hopefully safe levels
164	"Royal Society embraces skepticism"		The Royal Society still strongly state that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming.
165	"It's only a few degrees"		A few degrees of global warming has a huge impact on ice sheets, sea levels and other aspects of climate.
166	"It's satellite microwave transmissions"		Satellite transmissions are extremely small and irrelevant.
167	"CO2 only causes 35% of global warming"		CO2 and corresponding water vapor feedback are the biggest cause of global warming.
168	"Sea level fell in 2010"		The temporary drop in sea level in 2010 was due to intense land flooding caused by a strong La Nina.
169	"Arctic sea ice extent was lower in the past"		Current Arctic sea ice extent is the lowest in the past several thousand years.
170	"97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven"
171	"We didn't have global warming during the Industrial Revolution"		CO2 emissions were much smaller 100 years ago.
172	"Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick"		Ljungqvist's temperature reconstruction is very similar to other reconstructions by Moberg and Mann.
173	"Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater"		Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled.
174	"Removing all CO2 would make little difference"		Removing CO2 would cause most water in the air to rain out and cancel most of the greenhouse effect.
175	"Postma disproved the greenhouse effect"		Postma's model contains many simple errors; in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect.
176	"Heatwaves have happened before"		Global warming is increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves.