Heat goes on: Earth headed for warmest year on record

[TooOldForThis]

That's funny because the experts are not waiting for any more data. Do you know more about the subject than they do?

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  American Physical Society
  "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." (2007)
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Since I'm a member of the APS I can bring you up to date on the above statement which is from 8 years ago.

It was written by a small number of people and when it came out there were a lot of complaints from the membership. The basic problem was that only one side of a substantive issue was being discussed. Signatures were gathered in protest, some famous physicists quit the society, etc. You can read more about the turmoil here:

Driven by concern over the Statement, in 2009 I joined a small team of APS members. We collected and submitted a petition signed by nearly 300 physicists calling for the Statement to be moderated. The signatures were gathered one-by-one and included nearly 100 Fellows of major scientific societies, 17 members of national academies, and two Nobel Laureates. A number had published major research on the global warming issue, authored books on the issue, or worked in contiguous areas of meteorology and climate. Nearly all had backgrounds in key science areas that underlie the global warming issue.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/...n-physical-society-over-global-warming-issue/

Eventually the APS decided to convene a "workshop" on global warming. They selected a "neutral" physicist to chair the meeting, Steven E. Koonin. He has a BS and PhD in physics from Caltech and MIT and was appointed by President Obama as Under Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy. The Workshop invited 6 experts to the workshop, three arguing that the science shows that there is a man-caused global warming problem and three arguing that the science does not show that. You can read the transcript of the workshop at the APS website here:
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf

Now the above is a 573 page document but it's double spaced typewritten and reads pretty quickly. Go ahead and read it.

Anyway, the end result of the workshop was that the "skeptics" cleaned the clocks of the "alarmists". The Obama appointed "neutral" chairman eventually wrote an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal announcing that the science was not, in fact, settled. You can read his article (with annotations and references) at his website here, or you can google the somewhat shorter Wall Street Journal version:

Climate Science is Not Settled
Steven E. Koonin, Wall Street Journal, Sept 19, 2014

The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

My training as a computational physicist--together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector--has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don't know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.

The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from th e conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.

Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.
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http://cusp.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Climate-article-annotated1.pdf

So yeah, the APS has a statement about disruptions being a result of incontrovertible science. But the physicists who know the most about it don't believe it anymore. APS statements get regularly reviewed; I'm guessing this one gets reviewed this year or next and the results of the workshop will influence the next statement.

 

[Max E.]

This could be one of the dumbest things i have ever read, they are basically saying yeah a carbon tax would be highly regressive, but if we cut other taxes we could make up for it. And it took a study for these geniuses to figure that out. Guess what if I was to raise taxes on the poor but then just start handing out money to the poor at the same time, I could make up for the new tax burden. It didnt even take a study for me to figure that out.

Studies by Metcalf et al. (2008) and Metcalf (2009) consider the possible distributional impacts of carbon taxes in the United States.[202] The 2008 study considers three recent tax bills introduced to the US Congress. The taxes themselves are highly regressive, but when revenues from the tax are returned lump-sum, the taxes become progressive. The 2009 study looks at a carbon tax combined with a reduction in payroll taxes. It is found that this combination can be distributionally neutral. With an adjustment in Social Security payments for the lowest-income households, the carbon tax policy can be made progressive.

 

[WeToddDid2]

Since I'm a member of the APS I can bring you up to date on the above statement which is from 8 years ago.

It was written by a small number of people and when it came out there were a lot of complaints from the membership. The basic problem was that only one side of a substantive issue was being discussed. Signatures were gathered in protest, some famous physicists quit the society, etc. You can read more about the turmoil here:


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/...n-physical-society-over-global-warming-issue/

Eventually the APS decided to convene a "workshop" on global warming. They selected a "neutral" physicist to chair the meeting, Steven E. Koonin. He has a BS and PhD in physics from Caltech and MIT and was appointed by President Obama as Under Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy. The Workshop invited 6 experts to the workshop, three arguing that the science shows that there is a man-caused global warming problem and three arguing that the science does not show that. You can read the transcript of the workshop at the APS website here:
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf

Now the above is a 573 page document but it's double spaced typewritten and reads pretty quickly. Go ahead and read it.

Anyway, the end result of the workshop was that the "skeptics" cleaned the clocks of the "alarmists". The Obama appointed "neutral" chairman eventually wrote an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal announcing that the science was not, in fact, settled. You can read his article (with annotations and references) at his website here, or you can google the somewhat shorter Wall Street Journal version:

Climate Science is Not Settled
Steven E. Koonin, Wall Street Journal, Sept 19, 2014

http://cusp.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Climate-article-annotated1.pdf

So yeah, the APS has a statement about disruptions being a result of incontrovertible science. But the physicists who know the most about it don't believe it anymore. APS statements get regularly reviewed; I'm guessing this one gets reviewed this year or next and the results of the workshop will influence the next statement.

Thanks for posting. Good read.

Another great quote from article:

While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.

 

[fhl]

Fraudboy isn't going to like this.

 

[BSAM]

Anybody ever get tired of this continuing global warming debate here on ET?
If nobody's changed their mind one way or the other, I think it's somewhat of a futile effort.
How many years has this been going on???

 

[WeToddDid2]

Anybody ever get tired of this continuing global warming debate here on ET?
If nobody's changed their mind one way or the other, I think it's somewhat of a futile effort.
How many years has this been going on???

You most likely only have to wait 5 more years and then it will be mostly settled.

 

[WeToddDid2]

...

 

[gwb-trading]

Anybody ever get tired of this continuing global warming debate here on ET?
If nobody's changed their mind one way or the other, I think it's somewhat of a futile effort.
How many years has this been going on???

I am open-minded enough that if someone posts new information; a study, survey, report, paper, etc. then I am interested enough to take a look and welcome the new information. If I disagree with it then I will politely respond with my points.

I am however tired of the same old propaganda being posted over & over again - in many cases hundreds of times with the associated name calling (idiots, deniers, etc.) - I am pretty sure that any reasonable person will figure out quickly who I am referring to.

 

[BSAM]

I am open-minded enough that if someone posts new information; a study, survey, report, paper, etc. then I am interested enough to take a look and welcome the new information. If I disagree with it then I will politely respond with my points.

I am however tired of the same old propaganda being posted over & over again - in many cases hundreds of times with the associated name calling (idiots, deniers, etc.) - I am pretty sure that any reasonable person will figure out quickly who I am referring to.

But, that's kinda part of what I am saying.

While you want to be somewhat open minded, you must ask yourself if the people you are talking to, also want to be open minded.
I think they don't.

Usually, here on ET, the posters on both sides of this topic exhibit virtually no room for the other sides opinions.

 

[futurecurrents]

No really, among the climate scientists the debate over the basics is over, done, moving on to details now. This idea that they are debating it is absurd and only held by right wing nut jobs, which the APS has plenty of evidently.

The reason the debate over the basics is over? CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we have raised levels of it by 40%. This basic truth is inescapable.

Let's review what the official ( not some backroom gathering of Fox News watchers) statement of the APS is...

American Physical Society
"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now."

No science org in the world denies AGW. None, zip, zero.