2007 on course as fifth warmest globally; one of US warmest

Fool on the hillDec 14th, 2007 - 10:05:46

Please remember folks that we are only talking about the USA here and not globally

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PeteDec 14th, 2007 - 12:26:08

True for the tenth warmest, but the global figure is 5th warmest. The US is lagging the worldwide warming trend, which may be part of the reason americans appear so complacent about the problem, but since they only represent 6% of the Earth's surface, figures from the US are pretty well immaterial to the overall situation.

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NoharnessDec 14th, 2007 - 17:39:58

Gee, I wonder if this is what the climate was like when Leif Ericsson founded his first colony in Greenland? Our formal records only go back as far as 1895, right?

Mind you, I do think it is getting warmer. Orange trees are surviving year after year here in Houston, something that was unheard of during my childhood and youth. Curiously, it was NOT unheard of during my grandfather's time.

I don't think CO2 is a good enough insulator to be responsible for this. Such claims do NOT make sense and strike me as being silly, especially given that the IPCC steadfastly refused to address the role played by water vapor and ignored the fact that the warming trend does not appear to progress any higher than the lower troposphere. We may well be doing this to ourselves, but if we are, I'll give you long odds that has to do with the amount of water vapor we are dumping into the lower troposphere than it does with any of the other so-called 'greenhouse gases.'

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There is no such thing as man made global warming.Dec 14th, 2007 - 21:28:20

'The US is lagging the worldwide warming trend, which may be part of the reason americans appear so complacent about the problem, but since they only represent 6% of the Earth's surface, figures from the US are pretty well immaterial to the overall situation. '

Americans are complacent because there is nothing that can be done to regulate the sun cycles that cause global warming.... and cooling.

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PeteDec 15th, 2007 - 10:37:59

From New Scientist -
The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%. This was based on a reanalysis of the likely changes in solar forcing since the 17th century.

But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny.

Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .

Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity.

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