Tuesday, January 1st 2013, 3:43 AM EST
The signals could hardly be clearer: climate change is on the way, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity
This coming year, according to the Met Office, could be one of the warmest ever. This forecast is the latest in a cascade of ominous observations. Just in the last month US scientists warned that West Antarctica was warming twice as fast as expected, and three times faster than the average for the planet as a whole; and the European Space Agency revealed that snow cover in Europe and Asia in June had been the lowest since satellite observations began 45 years ago. It has been a year of extremes, in which the Arctic summer sea ice fell to its lowest ever; in which the 48 contiguous states of the US experienced the hottest ever temperatures and protracted drought; in which wildfires in the tundra darkened snow over Greenland and precipitated melting at an unprecedented rate. The largest Atlantic hurricane on record crippled New York, while Britain, which began the year with one of the driest winters on record, then experienced what for some counties proved to be the wettest year ever.
In global terms, 2012 was probably only the ninth warmest on record. But 11 of the 12 warmest ever have fallen in this young century. The signals could hardly be clearer: climate change is on the way, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity. More than two decades ago, scientists warned that these things would happen: they are happening, and faster than anybody expected.
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Ice reflects sunlight: it helps insulate the planet. Dark things – soot, blue water, tarmac and brick – absorb sunlight, and accelerate warming. So the loss of ice cover is itself going to feed back into extra warmth and even faster melting. For every 1C temperature rise, saturated air can hold 7% more water vapour. So with rising temperatures, there will be devastating drought in some regions and catastrophic floods and cyclones in others. But glacial ice is also water waiting to reach the ocean. Researchers warned in 1978 that the West Antarctic ice sheet was likely to melt as carbon dioxide levels rose. There is enough ice there to raise global sea levels by at least 4.5 metres: if that happened, London, New York, Shanghai and other estuarine megacities would become uninhabitable and most of Bangladesh could disappear. Already, as we report in connection with Britain today, food security is back on the political agenda in the rich world.
And the political response to these ominous signals? Ministers met in Doha, agreed once again that planetary warming should be limited to 2C rather than, say, a possible 4.8C, and promised to meet again in 2015. They then went back to worrying about economic growth. But unsustainable growth is the problem. Successive UK governments have grasped the gravity, but have acted slowly and inconsistently. This one – avowedly the "greenest government ever"– should be vigorously pursuing carbon-free ways of delivering energy and inventive ways of saving it. Instead, it has seconded energy executives into the civil service; it is contemplating the exploitation of shale gas; and it is watching rail fares rise by twice inflation, and so encouraging fossil fuel use on the road. In the US, attitudes are changing: senators and members of Congress may remain sceptical, but – according to a December poll – four Americans in five now think that temperatures are rising and government should act.
That is good news: politicians respond to electoral alarm. The bad news is that the longer the delay, the more radical the action needed, and the more single-minded, wholehearted and hardheaded the requisite international co-operation to deliver it. The auguries are not promising. Rationing resources is never easy politically, and nation states tend to compete, rather than co-operate. But headlong climate change presents hazards on a global scale, so global agreement and concerted action is the only option. We don't have another planet to go to. We really are all in this together.
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"The signals could hardly be clearer: climate change is on the way, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity"
Climate change is always ongoing and has been long before mankind started using fossil fuels.
THis is reason why I quit reading further because it is pure bull*censored* stipidity and flat out lies:
"In global terms, 2012 was probably only the ninth warmest on record. But 11 of the 12 warmest ever have fallen in this young century. The signals could hardly be clearer: climate change is on the way, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity. More than two decades ago, scientists warned that these things would happen: they are happening, and faster than anybody expected."
The idiots fail to acknowledge that the RATE of warming is about zero in the last 15 years or so.
The very phrase exposes their profound lack of rational though because they seem to think that there was NO climate change before man's use of fossil fuels came along and disturbed climate utopia as shown in their babbling below:
"The signals could hardly be clearer: climate change is on the way"
ROFLMAO!
They seem to think climate change was not happening at all not long ago but due to evil use of fossil fuels by wicked mankind climate change is now coming and even happening in someplaces.
Pure gutter level drivel is what it is.
The last part shows the utter lack of understanding of temperature data since they are misleading people with meaningless crap when the reality is that warming TREND stopped over a dozen years ago:
"In global terms, 2012 was probably only the ninth warmest on record. But 11 of the 12 warmest ever have fallen in this young century."
But ZERO warming trend the whole time and well below the IPCC's modeled temperature predictions of .20C warming for the decade which the bird cage lining paper fails to bring up.
No warming TREND ongoing in the last decade or so you idiots!
The Guardian has been full crap on global warming topic for years and the reason why the followers who fall for this crap meet me someplace on the internet and be exposed as ignorant peons they are because they are fed breadcrumbs of climate propaganda while I feast on reality based information.
That is why Bill Nye is the way he is because of what he reads and follows the low level of thinking of the Guardian and other stupid warmist outlets while realist blogs like this one tries to go with the actual science and reality that better educates people who come visit.
Bill Nye was smashed by educated skeptics in several debates and exposed as the warmist propagandist he is.
I have been blasting Glenn Tamblyn about their lack of the use of the SCIENTIFIC METHOD to support their climate modeling fantasies.He never answers it but continue to answer John O'Sullivan over what the NAS report says thus proving my belief that KNOW the entire CAGW conjecture fails the Scientific Method and instead continue to push the propaganda angle for a different purpose which is socialistic fascism for the world.
I have blasted John Cook about the lack of a stated:
Greenhouse hypothesis or other specific,there is a greehouse effect going on,statement in the 1979 NAS report.
He actually replied twice but ignores the point John and myself keep bringing up.The lack of a stated AGW hypothesis and other similar lines in the 1979 NAS report which used the model way to predict the future which is already wrong but Cook and Tamblyn pay no attention to that to continue their delusions.
I keep wondering why these people fail to notice that their GH conjecture was shown to be without merit 10 years ago and still is today as they continue to babble over warmist pap stuff while the conjecture/hypothesis is already dead and buried scientifically.
These days they go into weeping and gnashing of teeth over singular WEATHER events and say that is proof of global warming while these same assholes tell us that we can't use singular weather events or 2% of the Earths surface weather events against their CAGW delusion but warmists do it all the time now.
A single Russian heatwave a weather event.
A single giant storm Sandy a weather event.
A single Snow storm a weather event,
and so on.
NONE of it is part of a scientific method process they seem to have forgotten about.