Yes, the public reads at the Readers Digest level, which is about the same reading level as a 13 year old. Science journals assume a college reading level. There is no way that you can get the public to read a real science journal and comprehend it, for that reason alone.

Every field of study has its jargon to learn. But, not only that, there is a certain amount of basic knowledge and experience required for comprehension. The public is not very educated in science. That is another reason for their mistrust in climate change.

 

Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S.: study

I was looking for this thread and could not find it, so I started my own thread on the following news story:

I love Christianity in all of its diversity, but I think the United States would be a better country if there were fewer Protestant Fundamentalists, and more Episcopalians like me.

 

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

• Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

By David Rose

UPDATED:00:38 EST, 29 January 2012

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The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

A painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many frost fairs on the River Thames during the mini ice age

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.
Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.
We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.
Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.



More...

• Hotter summers 'may kill 5,900 every year', warns first national risk assessment of climate change
• Winter bites back: Britain braced for first cold snap of year as ice and snow transform countryside in scenes of breathtaking beauty
• What are the mysterious blue balls that fell from the sky over Bournemouth?

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.
However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.


Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’
These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.
‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.
CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.


So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.
‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.
Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.
‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.
He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.
‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.


She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .
Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.
The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.
‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’
Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.
‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ight-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz2SVUCVwck
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[YOUTUBE]OJ6Z04VJDco[/YOUTUBE]

 

The solar flux cycles have been proposed as having an effect upon climate change. But, it only has a minor ripple effect as compared with the green house effect and the positive feedback from melting ice. I have posted the published scientific references about this before in this thread.

 

Thanks for posting this deviousdave!


This is a pretty good video that touches all the bases. The only flaw I could hear is that the video describes the heat from the sun as being reflected by the earth. Actually, some of the sun's energy is reflected and part of it is absorbed by the earth. That which is reflected is the UV radiation which can get back out out of the atmosphere just as easily as it came in. However, the energy that is absorbed by the earth warms the earth and the earth radiates more energy as it warms in the infrared region. The IR energy is reradiated energy, not reflected, that becomes trapped by the green house gases.

 

[YOUTUBE]0EyfEDKWscg&feature=player_embedded[/YOUTUBE]

 

Residents flee the ‘Venice of Africa’ as climate change drowns city



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/...nice-of-africa-as-climate-change-drowns-city/

 

According to some(one), global warming now causes women to turn to prostitution. :neutral:

 

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-197&cid=release_2013-197

Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?

Permafrost zones occupy nearly a quarter of the exposed land area of the Northern Hemisphere. NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment is probing deep into the frozen lands above the Arctic Circle in Alaska to measure emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost - signals that may hold a key to Earth's climate future. Image credit: Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP/GRID-Arendal
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June 10, 2013

Flying low and slow above the wild, pristine terrain of Alaska's North Slope in a specially instrumented NASA plane, research scientist Charles Miller of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., surveys the endless whiteness of tundra and frozen permafrost below. On the horizon, a long, dark line appears. The plane draws nearer, and the mysterious object reveals itself to be a massive herd of migrating caribou, stretching for miles. It's a sight Miller won't soon forget.
"Seeing those caribou marching single-file across the tundra puts what we're doing here in the Arctic into perspective," said Miller, principal investigator of the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), a five-year NASA-led field campaign studying how climate change is affecting the Arctic's carbon cycle.
"The Arctic is critical to understanding global climate," he said. "Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt. Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system."
Aboard the NASA C-23 Sherpa aircraft from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., Miller, CARVE Project Manager Steve Dinardo of JPL and the CARVE science team are probing deep into the frozen lands above the Arctic Circle. The team is measuring emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost -- signals that may hold a key to Earth's climate future.
What Lies Beneath
Permafrost (perennially frozen) soils underlie much of the Arctic. Each summer, the top layers of these soils thaw. The thawed layer varies in depth from about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in the coldest tundra regions to several yards, or meters, in the southern boreal forests. This active soil layer at the surface provides the precarious foothold on which Arctic vegetation survives. The Arctic's extremely cold, wet conditions prevent dead plants and animals from decomposing, so each year another layer gets added to the reservoirs of organic carbon sequestered just beneath the topsoil.
Over hundreds of millennia, Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons). That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils. In comparison, about 350 petagrams of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850. Most of this carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 10 feet (3 meters) of the surface.
But, as scientists are learning, permafrost - and its stored carbon - may not be as permanent as its name implies. And that has them concerned.
"Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures - as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius) in just the past 30 years," Miller said. "As heat from Earth's surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilize these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic's carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming."
Current climate models do not adequately account for the impact of climate change on permafrost and how its degradation may affect regional and global climate. Scientists want to know how much permafrost carbon may be vulnerable to release as Earth's climate warms, and how fast it may be released.
CARVing Out a Better Understanding of Arctic Carbon
Enter CARVE. Now in its third year, this NASA Earth Ventures program investigation is expanding our understanding of how the Arctic's water and carbon cycles are linked to climate, as well as what effects fires and thawing permafrost are having on Arctic carbon emissions. CARVE is testing hypotheses that Arctic carbon reservoirs are vulnerable to climate warming, while delivering the first direct measurements and detailed regional maps of Arctic carbon dioxide and methane sources and demonstrating new remote sensing and modeling capabilities. About two dozen scientists from 12 institutions are participating.
"The Arctic is warming dramatically - two to three times faster than mid-latitude regions - yet we lack sustained observations and accurate climate models to know with confidence how the balance of carbon among living things will respond to climate change and related phenomena in the 21st century," said Miller. "Changes in climate may trigger transformations that are simply not reversible within our lifetimes, potentially causing rapid changes in the Earth system that will require adaptations by people and ecosystems."
The CARVE team flew test flights in 2011 and science flights in 2012. This April and May, they completed the first two of seven planned monthly campaigns in 2013, and they are currently flying their June campaign.
Each two-week flight campaign across the Alaskan Arctic is designed to capture seasonal variations in the Arctic carbon cycle: spring thaw in April/May, the peak of the summer growing season in June/July, and the annual fall refreeze and first snow in September/October. From a base in Fairbanks, Alaska, the C-23 flies up to eight hours a day to sites on Alaska's North Slope, interior and Yukon River Valley over tundra, permafrost, boreal forests, peatlands and wetlands.
The C-23 won't win any beauty contests - its pilots refer to it as "a UPS truck with a bad nose job." Inside, it's extremely noisy - the pilots and crew wear noise-cancelling headphones to communicate. "When you take the headphones off, it's like being at a NASCAR race," Miller quipped.
But what the C-23 lacks in beauty and quiet, it makes up for in reliability and its ability to fly "down in the mud," so to speak. Most of the time, it flies about 500 feet (152 meters) above ground level, with periodic ascents to higher altitudes to collect background data. Most airborne missions measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane do not fly as low. "CARVE shows you need to fly very close to the surface in the Arctic to capture the interesting exchanges of carbon taking place between Earth's surface and atmosphere," Miller said.
Onboard the plane, sophisticated instruments "sniff" the atmosphere for greenhouse gases. They include a very sensitive spectrometer that analyzes sunlight reflected from Earth's surface to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide. This instrument is an airborne simulator for NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission to be launched in 2014. Other instruments analyze air samples from outside the plane for the same chemicals. Aircraft navigation data and basic weather data are also collected. Initial data are delivered to scientists within 12 hours. Air samples are shipped to the University of Colorado's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research Stable Isotope Laboratory and Radiocarbon Laboratory in Boulder for analyses to determine the carbon's sources and whether it came from thawing permafrost.
Much of CARVE's science will come from flying at least three years, Miller says. "We are showing the power of using dependable, low-cost prop planes to make frequent, repeat measurements over time to look for changes from month to month and year to year."
Ground observations complement the aircraft data and are used to calibrate and validate them. The ground sites serve as anchor points for CARVE's flight tracks. Ground data include air samples from tall towers and measurements of soil moisture and temperature to determine whether soil is frozen, thawed or flooded.
A Tale of Two Greenhouse Gases
It's important to accurately characterize the soils and state of the land surfaces. There's a strong correlation between soil characteristics and release of carbon dioxide and methane. Historically, the cold, wet soils of Arctic ecosystems have stored more carbon than they have released. If climate change causes the Arctic to get warmer and drier, scientists expect most of the carbon to be released as carbon dioxide. If it gets warmer and wetter, most will be in the form of methane.
The distinction is critical. Molecule per molecule, methane is 22 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide on a 100-year timescale, and 105 times more potent on a 20-year timescale. If just one percent of the permafrost carbon released over a short time period is methane, it will have the same greenhouse impact as the 99 percent that is released as carbon dioxide. Characterizing this methane to carbon dioxide ratio is a major CARVE objective.
There are other correlations between Arctic soil characteristics and the release of carbon dioxide and methane. Variations in the timing of spring thaw and the length of the growing season have a major impact on vegetation productivity and whether high northern latitude regions generate or store carbon.
CARVE is also studying wildfire impacts on the Arctic's carbon cycle. Fires in boreal forests or tundra accelerate the thawing of permafrost and carbon release. Detailed fire observation records since 1942 show the average annual number of Alaska wildfires has increased, and fires with burn areas larger than 100,000 acres are occurring more frequently, trends scientists expect to accelerate in a warming Arctic. CARVE's simultaneous measurements of greenhouse gases will help quantify how much carbon is released to the atmosphere from fires in Alaska - a crucial and uncertain element of its carbon budget.
Early Results
The CARVE science team is busy analyzing data from its first full year of science flights. What they're finding, Miller said, is both amazing and potentially troubling.
"Some of the methane and carbon dioxide concentrations we've measured have been large, and we're seeing very different patterns from what models suggest," Miller said. "We saw large, regional-scale episodic bursts of higher-than-normal carbon dioxide and methane in interior Alaska and across the North Slope during the spring thaw, and they lasted until after the fall refreeze. To cite another example, in July 2012 we saw methane levels over swamps in the Innoko Wilderness that were 650 parts per billion higher than normal background levels. That's similar to what you might find in a large city."
Ultimately, the scientists hope their observations will indicate whether an irreversible permafrost tipping point may be near at hand. While scientists don't yet believe the Arctic has reached that tipping point, no one knows for sure. "We hope CARVE may be able to find that 'smoking gun,' if one exists," Miller said.
Other institutions participating in CARVE include City College of New York; the joint University of Colorado/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, Colo.; San Diego State University; University of California, Irvine; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.; University of California, Santa Barbara; NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, Colo.; and University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
For more information on CARVE, visit: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/carve/ .


Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0474
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

2013-197

 

[YOUTUBE]XvXMBwANyvY[/YOUTUBE]

 

Just another view from an economist and politician that has no scientific background or expertise.



Bloom rejects anthropogenic global warming. He said in 2009: "As far as I am concerned man-made global warming is nothing more than a hypothesis that hasn't got any basis in fact. Every day more scientists are modifying their initial views." [19] He argues that the global climate has actually been cooling down since 2002, and bases this on "the very early skiing season" each year.[20







.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/US_Electrical_Generation_1949-2011.png



as of 2011, this is the approximate breakdown of US energy generation:
44% coal
25% natural gas
19% nuclear
13% renewable energy

Note that the use of coal has been on the decline whilethe use of natural gas and renewable energy is on the rise. Also, nuclear energy has not changed much in recent years.

 

I may have posted this argument before in this thread. If so, I post it again.

There are three reasons I believe in man made global warming. First, it is the consensus of climatologists. Second, it is plausible. Third, I have noticed climate changes during my lifetime.

On any complex, controversial, and emotional dispute I think the consensus of the experts is more likely to be right than wrong. The only exception here would be on the relationship between genes, IQ, crime, race, and success in life. Until the sanctions against maintaining a strong relationship are lifted, claims that books like The Bell Curve have been "decisively refuted," by academics should be viewed skeptically. I am unaware of any one who has lost his job for maintaining that man made global warming is not happening. Many who maintain this have well paying jobs with the fossil fuel industry, and right wing think tanks.

Second, it is clear from the fossil record that when dinosaurs lived the climate on earth was warmer. Much of what is now the United States was under water, because sea levels were higher. As time went on plants took carbon out of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Most of these plants decayed, and the carbon in them oxidized, returning to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. However, in heavily forested areas plants were covered up by more plants before they had the chance to decay. Over millions of years the remains of these plants became coal, petroleum, and natural gas. By consuming these we are reversing a process that took hundreds of millions of years. If this continues, we will restore an earlier and much warmer climate.

Third, during my life I have noticed warmer winters and hotter summers.

 

There you have it, folks. The resident logician declares that global warming is plausible.

A stellar endorsement, from the man who insists that blacks are intrinsically violent idiots.

 

I never said all of them are. Indeed I specifically said most of them are not.

The problem is, they are more likely to be that way than whites.

Some of my detractors here are too stupid to detect nuances like that. You are not, so you are being dishonest.

 

My second emoticon was intended to be this:

 

[YOUTUBE]7W33HRc1A6c[/YOUTUBE]

 

George Carlin was a great comedian, social critic, linguist, and actor. Not a scientist, however.

 

Carlin correct though, the planet is fine. The planet is going to be fine for a few billion years. Life will carry on regardless of our impact on the climate. Whatever impact climate change has on some species, it simply creates new niches for other species to fill.

It's the economic threat of climate change, and the impact on humans that is the real concern. The people who are probably going to suffer most are those in Africa, and those from the developing world. Climate change could potentially increase the number of droughts leading to famine. Countries like the USA have the finances and resources to deal with a different climate. It's whether or not the USA and other wealthy countries have the economic resources to cope with mass immigration of unskilled people from poor countries fleeing their inhospitable homelands.

Unfortunately it's lose-lose for the developing world. Our solution to climate change currently lies with making energy more expensive, and this is bad news for those countries where people already suffer in poverty.