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Global Warming
Climate Change
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Problem

The presence of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere causes heat from the earth which would normally be radiated out to space to be retained in the atmosphere.
Most of this increase is from Anthropogenic (derived from human activities) sources. Electrical power generation, Industrial Processes, Transportation and Agriculture account for 65% of the gasses.

See Greenhouse Gases

Science

Case for Warming
  • We have had 27 consecutive years with the global average temperature greater than the 120 year historical average.
  • The polar ice caps are melting.
  • The four highest average world temperature years all occured within the last 6 years:
    1. 1998 58.17°
    2. 2002
    3. 2003
    4. 2001
  • In 2003 Glaciers in Argentina and Chile are melting at double the rate of 1975
  • Ice shelves the size of Rhode Island have broken off of Antartica since 1995.
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 (AR4) states that the probability of human influence on Climate Change is over 90%. See
  • Temperatures are rising 3 times as fast ofer the last three decades as it did over the entire 20th century.
Skeptics
The number of Americans who believe the earth is warming dropped from 79% in 2006 to 59% in 2011.
A Pew poll in the spring of 2011 found 75% of staunch conservatives, 63% of libertarians and 55% of Main Street Republicans said there was no solid evidence of global warming. 75% of Democrats believe there is strong evidence of climate change.
In the rest of the world, conservatives rather than posing an obstacle, are directing aggressive climate policies. In Britain, where a 2008 law required deep cuts in emissions, a coalition Conservative government is now championing a Green Deal.
Source: Whatever Happened to Global Warming? - NYTimes.com

There are still skeptics, who point to normal waraming cycles (on the order of 100,000 years) and short term (decade) cycles in the north atlantic as the reason for the current changes. There are also warming effects from slight changes in the earth's orbit, tilt in the earth's axis and solar cycles. However, the number of skeptics is declining.

Some of their arguments:
Warming is part of a natural cycle:
There are hisorical cycles of warming and cooling (e.g. an ice age every 100,000 years):
However, the current rate of change (1°F in the northern hemisphere in the last 50 years) is much greater than any in the last 500 (some say 1,300) years.

There are several theories for these natural cycles:
One the earth's orbit is not round and we get closer to the sun every so often.
And the suns output increases every 11 years or so. However the change in solar radiation has only benn about 0.1% over the last 50 years which would not account for magnitude of the warming.
Also, the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is warming while the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is cooler. If the sun was causing the warming both would be getting warmer.
See Global Warming Skeptics.

Intresting Plots

400,000 yrs:
This figure shows the temperature record from the Vostok ice core (dark blue), together with CO2 (red) from the Vostok ice core, the Law Dome ice core, and from the Mauna Loa monitoring station in Hawaii. The near vertical line on the right represents the change in CO2 associated with the industrial revolution.
Source: (www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/)
Similar chart: www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/references2.html

Al Gore shows a similar chart to the above in his 2006 movie "An Inconvenient Truth".

I don't know why they use this chart because it seems to indicate there are natural cycles way before our current increase in greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 increases seem to lag the warming.
One explanation is the time resolution of these two records is too low to provide a accurate comparison.
Another explanation at RealClimate.org says "The CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. CO2 might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released through natural ocean currents when the climate warms."

1,000 yrs:

Source: http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/rise_start.html

130 yrs:

Source: If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Damned Cold?, Hansen, Ruedy, Sato, Lo

Sources of CO2 and greenhouse gasses


Source: Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) at the Dept. of Energy (DOE)

More Information on Global Warming

Feb., 2007 - The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported on their three-year study of how temperatures are likely to rise as global warming takes hold.
They adopted the Summary for Policymakers of the first volume of "Climate Change 2007", also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
It suggests a terrifying leap in average global temperatures of up to 6.4°C - with higher figures nearer the poles - could occur over the next century, with the most likely range of increase from 1.8°C to 4°C.
A February 3, 2007 article by The independent News/UK lists the following consequences of such temperature increases.

It says glacial shrinkage, ice loss and permafrost retreat are signs that climate change is already underway. Predicts higher risk of drought, floods and more powerful storms this century, increasing the probability of hunger, homelessness and water-borne disease. 

Temp change ° C
 +2.4°: Coral reefs almost extinct
 +3.4°: Rainforest turns to desert
 +4.4°: Melting ice caps displace millions
 +5.4°: Sea levels rise by five metres
 +6.4°: Most of life is exterminated

Secondary Effects:
We've all heard about increased temperatures from the greenhouse effect, but there are other indirect consequences of this.
Feedback - Negative feedback has a regulating effect on systems, slowing change; positive feedback tends to exaggerate change.
  - Negative feedback - good

  • More Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has a fertilizing effect increasing the growth rate of plants which use CO2 in photosynthesis; The increased plant growth absorbs more CO2.

  - Positive feedback - bad

  • Arctic ice reflects sunlight, and heat, back into space; As it melts dark ocean and land absorbs more sunlight and heats up, causing more ice to melt.
  • The frozen permafrost of Siberia and northern Canada, which lock up vast stores of carbon in the form of methane (CH4) (a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide), formed by the decomposition of organic matter. As it melts this gas is released.
    The peat bogs of Siberia began to "boil" furiously in the summer of 2006 as methane bubbled to the surface.
  • The oceans absorb CO2, which dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid. It is harder for more carbon dioxide to dissolve in acid water.
  • Phytoplankton, the tiny microscopic plants of the sea that form the basis of the entire marine food chain absorb carbon dioxide; They are finding it harder to live in the more stratified layers of the warmer ocean. Since 2000, when the sea surface temperatures began to rise more noticeably, the photosynthetic productivity of phytoplankton have decreased in some ocean regions by 30 per cent.
    A doomsday consequence of this would be the death of the oceans.

Other effects:
The fresh water melting from the ice caps could lower the density of the water around Greenland, so it no longer sinks as it is cooled, thus and stopping the Gulf stream, which now warms Europe. And not just the Gulf Stream, but the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, the system of interconnected ocean currents that girdle the planet. So, Europe could get colder.
See "The Science of Abrupt Climate Change" at the Weather Underground.

Glacier Melt:
In a Feb. 16, 2006 article "Greenland's glaciers losing ice at faster rate" at MSNBC is said:
"The evolution of the ice sheet, in the context of climate warming, is more rapid than has been predicted by models," one of the researchers, Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told MSNBC.com. Satellite observations indicate that Greenland's glaciers have been dumping ice into the Atlantic Ocean at a rate that's doubled over the past five years.

A Friday October 17, 2003 article in The Guardian "Warming doubles glacier melt" said:

Glaciers in Argentina and Chile are melting at double the rate of 1975 because of global warming scientists said yesterday, after calculating that the ice lost between 1995 and 2000 was equivalent to a rise in sea level of about 0.105mm a year.

Scientists combined space observation and survey data of the 63 largest Patagonian ice fields. Comparing ice loss rates from 1968-1975 and 1975-2000 they found it had more than doubled.

The researchers, led by Eric Rignot, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, wrote in the journal Science that the Patagonian glaciers accounted for 9% of the glacial contribution to sea level rises, while those in Alaska were behind sea level rises of 30%. Yet in Patagonian the area covered by glaciers was five times smaller than that in Alaska.

The greater "vulnerability" of Patagonia to climate change was due to the glaciers' higher turnover rates and a "dominance of calving glaciers".

Worldwide Response:
According to "Whatever Happened to Global Warming?" - NYTimes.com Oct. 16, 2011,
"Two years ago the assumption was that the developed world would have to lead, but now China, India and Brazil have jumped in with enthusiasm, and are moving ahead."
"Buffeted by two years of treacherous weather that they are less able to handle than richer nations - from floods in India to water shortages in China - developing countries are feeling vulnerable."

Despite the recession Europe continues its yearly expansion of the carbon emissions trading system started in 2005. A 2010 Pew survey showed that more than 70 percent of people in China, India and South Korea were willing to pay more for energy in order to address climate change. The number in the United States was 38 percent.

Terms:

  • Anthropogenic - derived from human activities.
  • AR4 4th Assessment Report from IPCC, 2007
  • Carbon sequestration - the process through which plant life removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in biomass.
    See Sequestration below.
  • CCS - Carbon Capture and Sequestration
  • EIA - Energy Information Administration
  • GCM - general circulation model
  • Geologic sequestration - a chain of activities that result in collection and transport of concentrated CO2 gas from large emission sources, such as power plants, and subsequent injection into deep underground reservoirs.
  • GISS or GISSTEMP - Goddard Institute for Space Studies
  • HadCRUT - Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's
  • RF - Radiative forcing - the change in net irradiance (solar plus longwave) at the tropospause. See Greenhouse gases.
  • Sequestration - Capturing CO2 and putting it somewhere where it won't be released into the atmosphere.
  • UAH - University of Alabama Huntsville
See: Glossary here

Extreme Weather:
Scientists agree that extreme weather events will be more severe and frequent on a warming planet, and insurance companies have already documented an increase.
Global warming was blamed on the increase in hurricanes in 2005, but 2006 and 2007 have had a below average number of hurricane.

Articles:
The Technology Path to Deep Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts by 2050: The Pivotal Role of Electricity, Science 6 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6064 pp. 53-59

links:
Whatever Happened to Global Warming? - NYTimes.com Oct. 16, 2011
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project
If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Damned Cold?
EERE (USDE - Energy Effeciency and Renewable Energy): Consumer's Guide to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Home Page
Despite Climategate, IPCC Mostly Underestimates Climate Change: Scientific American Podcast
Pew Research Center study - There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem - 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.
Green Living (Cool Cities, Green Buildings)
Energy Statistics
Timeline
National Climatic Data Center - NCDC Climate Monitoring at NOAA
Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy at the Dept. of Energy (DOE)
Sources of Carbon Dioxide, 1997 from the EPA
Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2005
National Renewable Energy laboratory nrel.gov
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Greenhouse gas at Wikipedia
Climatology; Ice Ages at U. Oregon
Global Warming and Clean Energy at the National Sierra Club
TEN POPULAR MYTHS About Global Climate Change at the Sierra Club of Canada
WorldViewOfGlobalWarming.org - The World View of Global Warming project is documenting this change through science photography from the Arctic to Antarctica, from glaciers to the oceans, across all climate zones.
New Zealand national-average temperature
A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions
Global Warming Center at AccuWeather.com
Chart Of The Global Average Temperature 2500 B.C. - 2007 A.D. - 3dGameMan: Kickass Forum
Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) - www.nesea.org
Advanced Solar Products, NJ
John Mashey's seminar on "The Machinery of Climate Anti-Science"
John Mashey replies to Peter Wood's hit piece on Global Warming
The Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation

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last updated 22 Oct 2011