[cogitator]

Because there are already 213 articles on Google News about this, I thought it would be prudent to read the press release FIRST, unfiltered by the media.

The linked press release includes images with captions. I did not include them in this posting.

[cogitator]

** ping **

[BenLurkin]

Exactly.

Thousands of years ago there were no SUVs to blame.

[rhombus]

Scientists concluded that these data showed the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.36° Fahrenheit (0.2° Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years.

Oh my God, that's a little over 1 degree in 30 years. I thought it was hot in here. Hey is that a triceratops? Forget about the Muzzies who want to kill us. What are we going to do when the dinosaurs return? Panic now, before it's too late!!!

[ClearCase_guy]

now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years.

Or, there is this story:

Earth Headed for Warmest Temps in a Million Yearsl

Drive-by climatologists. They just want their name in the paper.

[theBuckwheat]

NASA isn't saying what humans did anciently to mitigate "global warming".

There are plenty of leftists, and supporters of big and Bigger government, and doogooders who are willing to tell us how to mitigate it today. Oddly, nor maybe not so oddly, all their plans have a common thread: reduced liberty, increased costs and increased central control over the lives of the average person.

[DBrow]

"at any prior time in the Holocene"

So things have been getting warmer since the end of the last Ice Age.

Will they get warmer yet as the Milankovitch cycle continues?

[Lucky Dog]

If we do not slow down the rate of global warming, many species are likely to become extinct. In effect we are pushing them off the planet.

Author’s implied logic chain:

Premise: The earth’s climate is becoming warmer than it should from natural processes.
Premise: This warming is the result of human activity.
Conclusion: Changing human activity will stop global warming.

This syllogism is invalid as well as unsound from a number of perspectives. First, the major premise contains an unproven assumption that the current postulated warming is not part of a natural statistical variation. Second, the minor premise is unproven and, hence, the conclusion is potentially false. Third, the conclusion is not inevitable as, even if the second premise were true, it may be too late to reverse any trend or, perhaps, a natural mechanism will mitigate the situation such as a increase in plant life (like algae) to absorb and convert CO2 or other green house gases.

Author’s implied logic chain:

Premise: Global warming is bad.
Premise: Changing human activity will stop global warming.
Conclusion: Prudence demands implementing this change immediately.

This syllogism is also invalid and unsound from a number of perspectives. First, as noted above, there is no concrete indication that global warming will lead to catastrophic or deleterious effects. In fact, ice core drillings have indicated that the earth has been warmer as well as cooler than it is now a number of times in the past without catastrophe. Second, the minor premise is faulty as noted above. Finally, the conclusion ignores the deleterious impacts on humanity of the proposed changes that are speculated to mitigate the problem without the proof that the proposed changes would do anything to lessen global warming.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

The weather is more the way it is today than it has ever been before.

[wbill]

A study that appeared in Nature Magazine in 2003 found that 1700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of 6 kilometers (about 4 miles) per decade in the last half of the 20th century.

So many points to discuss....I'll just pick one.

A specices (as a whole) moved poleward by a total of 20 miles in the past 50 years? How would you go about measuring something like that? And, how would it be relevant?

More Global Warming nonsense. James Hansen, irregardless of his credentials, is one of the larger Chicken Littles out there.

[Parley Baer]

So? We have been comming out of an Ice Age for what 10-12,000 years. It would only be natural for warming to be the highest in thousands of years. If you look at the big picture as I have seen on some graph's this is nothing.

[RightWhale]

Heard that NASA guy again this morning pushing his retired-guy agenda. Kind of reminds one of retired guys who appear on the Art Bell Show with their tales of captured UFOs in the mountains.

[palmer]

The most important result found by these researchers is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8°F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years

Also the most misleading result. They are comparing precise measurements from the present with very imprecise and smoothed measurements from the past. All the spikes like the one of the last 30 years disappear when the temperature proxy only takes measurements every century or 1000 years and averages decades or centuries worth of variation into that measurement.

[Wuli]

This report is a study in contradictions and assumptions; assumptions made on information that is, by all scientific acknowledgement, less that all that needs to be known. The "scientific" models are built on data that the scientists know has gaps and complete holes in places, in some areas that they know as major factors in earth heat generation and cycles.

"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and warm the surface. Some greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, occur naturally, while others are due to human activities."

Contradictions that produce false claims: (a)"human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor"; (b)"greenhouse gases which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, while others are due to human activities"; however (c)water vapor is the largest component of "greenhouse gases" responsible for climate change and (d)most atmospheric water vapor is not "human made" and humans have almost zero ability to control it. See: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

"The study notes that the world's warming is greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is larger over land than over ocean areas. The enhanced warming at high latitudes is attributed to effects of ice and snow. As the Earth warms, snow and ice melt, uncovering darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, a process called a positive feedback. Warming is less over ocean than over land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there."

The above statement is not science or it is terribly bad communication. The atmosphere and the oceans circulate any and all earth warming or cooling. Yes, there are temperature differences, due to the specifics of a particular location such as latitude (closer to the poles or closer to the equator), altitude (elevation above sea level), path of prevailing jet-stream and trade wind patterns and other factors. But, the description in the preceding paragraph is a description of affects, not causes. The northern latitudes are not "warming" because the snow and ice are melting, exposing more land. The snow and ice are melting because it is warming there. The heat that is absorbed does contribute to warming ground temperatures, but it does not contribute immensely to warmer atmospheric temperatures and would cease to be a factor if (and when) atmospheric temperatures drop.

What has actually been observed in the northernmost latitudes is areas of snow and ice melt nearest the oceans (like Greenland and Antarctica) which has (a)reduced glaciers at the waters edge and melted snow nearest the oceans, and (b)produced greater local water vapor which when meeting the atmosphere has produced greater snow fall, which has produced much deeper and denser snow packs inland, which in affect is (c)building the makings of the next phase of glacial expansion when the warming cycle recedes again.

"The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments......One of the findings .........is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene" - the Holocene is our current "relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change."

Here where the science is slipping up. The oceans cover 2/3 of the earth. What happens in and under the oceans and between the oceans and the atmosphere is 2/3 of the climate story but probably less than 10% of the known data. Why? The earth, through its molten core, its magnetic field, its tectonic activity (shifting plates of land sliding around the earth) is a huge heat generator and dispenser. Most of that heat, from earthquakes, to volcanoes and millions of fissures, from tiny to immense, is dispensed under the oceans, absorbed by ocean water and transported to the atmosphere (and back) in the form of water vapor. Which, the link above has already told you is more dense lately, and the largest contributor to "global warming". And yet, that activity is not constant in its severity or its distribution. And, this part of the science is the weakest part in terms of data to represent this activity.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060727180622.htm

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2003/pressRelease20030718/index.html

"According to Lea, 'The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world's oceans and for the global atmosphere." In contrast to the Western Pacific, the researchers find that the Eastern Pacific Ocean has not shown an equal magnitude of warming. They explain the lesser warming in the East Pacific Ocean, near South America, as being due to the fact this region is kept cool by upwelling, rising of deeper colder water to shallower depths. The deep ocean layers have not yet been affected much by human-made warming.

And yet that explanation should also hold true for the northeastern Pacific, but it does not, because it is warmer than the eastern Pacific in the south and warmer than the western Pacific. Since the water and atmospheric flows are generally west to east (caused by the earth's rotation), what is under the middle of the northern Pacific that makes it warmer, and thus increases the northern Pacific's contribution of water vapor - the largest green house gas?

[Oberon]

"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen.

This evidence indicates somebody's got an agenda.

[JustDoItAlways]

Steve Mcintyre from ClimateAudit has already (partially) de-constructed this paper and you would laugh if you saw the results.

Hansen is just a propagandist like Goebbels was, pure and simple.

http://www.climateaudit.org/