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For several years climate scientists have said that global warning will be accompanied by more extreme weather events, but that you can’t link specific events to global warming. A year ago, Bill McKibbon did just that in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece. Now, more and more Americans seem to be doing the same thing.
This a conclusion of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications study, “Extreme Weather, Climate and Preparedness in the American Mind.” Based on a survey this past March of a representative sample of 1,008 American adults, it found that fifty-two percent of respondents said they noticed that the weather has been somewhat or much worse over the last few years. Fifty-six and 62 percent of Americans have noticed extreme weather in their local areas and elsewhere in the United States. respectively. These events included extreme winds, rain, and heat; drought; extreme cold and snow; tornado and hurricane; flood; and wildfire. Eighty-two percent of Americans said they had experienced from one to seven or more of these events. Overall, 35 percent of respondents said they had been harmed by extreme weather and 68 percent said they knew someone who had. So, the perception of significantly worse weather is widespread.
A high proportion of respondents nationally linked global warming to extreme weather: Sixty-nine percent of all Americans agreed somewhat or strongly that global warming is affecting US weather. In addition, this view is widely held across regions: Seventy-one percent of respondents in the northeast, Midwest, and west strongly or mostly agreed along with 66 percent of respondents in the south. This is particularly interesting because the south and west are generally more conservative than the northeast, yet there is little difference among the regions.
However, the report did not address two issues: Is global warming anthropogenic (caused by human activity) and how do these results look when compared with prior results?
Taking the second question first, it has to be said that it is difficult to compare results from different surveys. Nonetheless, we do have some data on belief in global warming. For example, the Pew Center asked about belief in climate change for 2006-2011. This survey found a decline from 77 percent believing there was evidence of global warming in 2006-07 to 57 percent in 2009. In 2010-2011, positive responses rose back modestly to 59 and 63 percent respectively. By contrast, Pew reported that the proportion of people who believed that warming was not happening grew from 17 percent in 2006 to 33 percent in 2009 before falling to 28 percent in 2011.
These results suggest – and I want to emphasize suggest – that the more bizarre weather over the last couple of years may be moving people to greater acceptance of the notion that climate change is occurring and may be directly affecting our lives.
Turning to whether global warming is anthropogenic, the proportion of respondents who believed that continues to decline from 47 percent in 2006-08 to 34 percent in 2010 before increasing a little to 38 percent in 2011, still less than the proportion of respondents in 2006.
All this suggests that the key element in public discourse is less likely to be the issue of whether global warming is happening than whether human activity is respnnsible. Moreover, it seems that significant elements of the “climate deniers” have pivoted from denying climate change is happening to insisting that it is a natural phenomenon over which we have no control. It would seem obvious that even if it is natural, we should be making all-out efforts at melioration. But those arguing that it is natural simply use this as one more excuse to say that since there’s nothing we can do about climate change, there’s nothing we should do.
This means we need a two-pronged approach. We need to keep trying to convince people that anthropogenic forces are at work. But for those that continue to argue that climate change is just a natural phenomenon, we need to move them to seeing the need for systematic amelioration.
There is no need to be concerned about global warming.
The present global warming started approximately 25 thousand years ago and is about to end as a new ice-age begins.
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
The “Vostok Ice Core Data” indicates that long before the industrial age, temperature change caused an 800 year delayed change in the atmospheric CO2 level and that was misinterpreted to be the cause of the temperature change. It was not.
According to the Vostok data the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is 380 ppm = 0.038% = 0.00038 and is a very small proportion. The difference between natural and man made CO2 is less than 0.008% = 0.00008 and probably has as much influence on the earths temperature as its magnitude suggests.
If the periodic temperature cycling is as consistent today as it has been for the last 450 thousand years in the Vostok data, an ice-age is due to start soon and it has nothing to do with human activity or the 0.038% of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Now you can be alarmed about the new ice-age instead.
Ed
Equestrian Support Specailist
Thanks for sending me the link that combines your erudite article with Bill McKibbon’s Op-Ed piece. The first sentence in your article is right on target and absolutely correct, in that: “For several years climate scientists have said that global warning will be accompanied by more extreme weather events, but that you can’t link specific events to global warming.” Unfortunately the next statement that: “A year ago, Bill McKibbon did just that {link specific events to global warming} is just wishful thinking on both Bill’s and apparently your part too. If you want to make it really accurate, just replace the word “did” with “pretended to do.” Simply stating that there is a link (which Bill did many times in the Op-Ed) without a shred of any measurement, analysis, or evidence, does not make it true, no matter how often it is repeated or how many repetitions of different examples are used.
Thereafter, the Yale “study” purports to “vote” on those links that reputable scientists “…can’t link specific events to global warming.” Simply put, belief is not science! It is simply opinion, and not necessarily correct opinion. I won’t insult you with a litany of “beliefs” in history that we now hold to be ludicrous, but no matter how many people believe that two and two equal five, when actual measurement and validation exercises are performed, it still comes out to be 4.
Perhaps Bill McKibben has the hubris to go against established science that still “…can’t link specific events to global warming,” but neither you nor Yale should. At least the Yale authors were entirely up front about their methodology, and specifically show that opinion (not fact) was being measured. Bill’s Op-Ed, on the other hand was totally bereft of science, measures, data, and any proven linkage – just assertion after (well written) sarcastic assertion, but just “plain ole” belief nonetheless. The Sierra Article that you penned just follows the same path, albeit (from a literary standpoint) nicely done. You too, correctly state that opinion is being described, and that is good to know! Unfortunately Bill does not, although in his defense, Op-Ed submissions routinely fall into that category.
I believe you recall the “Temperature and CO2 Disconnect” piece I sent you: http://www.colderside.com/Colderside/Temp_%26_CO2.html, – all actual and verifiable measurements, data, and trends which ironically counter the Op-Ed, as the flatline temperatures certainly aren’t rising anymore, and extend beyond the exact time period of the events Bill McKibben mentions and uses (without valid measured linkage) to “prove” (I insult science by using that word) his points.
My focus for years has been elimination of poisons, carcinogens, and other horrible things entering the environment. EPA’s diversion into CO2 diverts their attention from really dangerous environmental impacts, and they (and Sierra Club) need to get back on John Muir’s wavelength!
Hi, Ed: Some valid points, and mentioning that CO2, throughout the VOSTOK (and EPICA too!) Ice Core Record(s) appears as a LAGGING indicator supports your viewpoint. Yet all is not quite that clear, as the previous interglacials ended in sharp declines, per the Ewing-Donn model, while we are currently in a 10,000 year temperature flatline(+/- 2C), that has no precedent in any ice core record!
Suspects include the rise of agriculture, human animal husbandry, combustion of forest products, biota changes, and even petrochemical usage, all happening in that same recent 10K year period, wherein CO2 pedals along at the 260-280ppm level. Skyrocketing CO2 of the present day still has not pulled temperatures out of the +/- 2C zone, so your point is well taken there too!
However, until the 10k year flatline (which is still 2degrees under the past interglacial peaks) is explained within a proper geological context, the Ewing-Donn Ice Age onset will have to wait for the floating Arctic Ice to melt almost entirely, a process which may happen within your lifetime, if that is what you meant by “soon.”. THEN you can celebrate the return of the great glaciers!!!
Tom and Ed seem taken by the notion that we are about to enter a new ice age. My piece does assume that the consensus view among vast majority of climate scientists — that the problem is warming, not cooling — is correct and focuses on social and political issues. Specifically, it focuses on public perceptions and the tasks for environmentalists, which is where I hope the discussion will land.
With regard to the issue of a coming ice age, I see no compelling evidence for the cooling hypothesis in the literature I have looked at (including Tom’s work). This issue was actually discussed among climatologists and, I thought, disposed of in the 1970′s. For interested readers, here are three articles (the last is somewhat technical) that may be helpful.
“Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims,” http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3213/Dont-Miss-it-Climate-Depots-Factsheet-on-1970s-Coming-Ice-Age-Claims
“What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?” http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm
“The global cooling myth,” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/,
Hello Tom,
It has been my experience that effects occur after the cause and never before. The temperature dependence of CO2 solubility in water or the ocean is well known.
My guestimate from the Vostok graph for cooling would be in a generation or two.
It is only my humble opinion. Thankfully for now, we still have the freedom to state our opinions.
Ed
Hello Gary,
It is the periodic cycling of temperature of the Vostok graph that leads one to believe in the continuance of the periodicity. I have seen many natural and synthesized oscillatory systems and their waveforms. It is only from my experience that I state my belief. There is no other basis.
Ed
Ed — I wish you and Tom would have your discussion off-line (as they say) since it has nothing to do with the central argument in this post and is distracting for readers. On a technical level, you can prove anything with graphs by squishing or expanding the horizontal or vertical axes. And the relevance of the Vostok series has been thrashed out in technical discussions. So, please take it there.
For those who need a reference to the relevance of climate change to extreme weather, see https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-10.1.html. What we are seeing is consistent with these observations. That’s all that’s relevant to the technical issues.
In this recent presentation, Greg Holland shows that while the number of hurricanes is not increasing, the ratio of class 4&5 hurricanes relative to classes 1&2 has increased since 1975 and argues that it has to do with climate change.
The evidence keeps mounting that that human are causing more strong hurricanes.See: http://skepticalscience.com/grinsted-hurricane-stronger.html