Climate change wreaking havoc with seasons (The Independent, UK)

[dbt]

Frogs have begun spawning in Britain as early as October, oaks are coming into leaf three weeks earlier than they were 50 years ago and there were an unprecedented 4,000 sightings of bumblebees by the end of January this year.

Scientists, who also noted that people were mowing their lawns earlier, have concluded that spring now arrives ahead of schedule.

"The findings suggest that there won't be a smooth progression towards a warmer climate, with all species advancing in unison, but rather that different responses may disrupt the complex linkages in nature," said Tim Sparks, one of the report's authors.

It is now warmer than at any point in the past 1,000 years and nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred in the past decade.

More.

[NickofTime]

1. Been There, Done That

Medieval Warm Period

Framers Saved Us from The Ice Age

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. And the temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period reached....

...what levels, exactly? What were the average mean temperatures during that time?

Nice try, but no cigar.

[PaulaFarrell]

3. might want to check your sources first

From www.sourcewatch.org:

Thomas Gale Moore is listed as Adjunct Scholar for Cato Institute, <2> (http://www.cei.org/pages/tmoore.cfm) and currently is on the board of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is also associated with The Independent Institute, and Hoover Institution. The tobacco links to Cato and C.E.I. are well documented, and do not need repetition -- just click the links provided. The Independent Institute is another Koch-funded organ using tabacco-techniques of the white lab coats to dissemble about global warming, of which Moore is an identified flack. Remember, Koch is an OIL company, even if they loan troops for tobacco battles. The evidence of this report is that Moore is corrupt, and was so on the day his name was listed on this report. Funders to Moore's various institutes include the "usual suspects" Olin-Bradley-Koch-Scaife, et al.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Thomas_Gale_Moore

[Media_Lies_Daily]

4. Excellent post! Thanks!

[Viking12]

7. Nice try. Here's an image from the journal Nature

Pretty much puts it into prespective (the results have been reproduced by numerous researchers employing a variety of reconstruction methods).

[Viking12]

9. Strange bedfellows you choose

Firstly, people who have argued that there really hasn't been a significant rise in CO2 since the 1800s, now accept the ice core results that show there was a much smaller rise from 8000 yrs ago. Secondly, those that argued that the 20th Century CO2 rise cannot be anthropogenic, appear to accept that the post-8000 BP change was. Thirdly, those who argue that the current increase in greenhouse gases has no significant climate effect, now appear to believe that the much smaller changes in the pre-industrial prevented an ice age.

This is like someone who believes the earth is flat buying a round-the-world ticket for their vacation.

-snip-

Let me make it a little clearer. If one accepts Ruddiman's hypothesis, one implicitly agrees that: i) CO2 and CH4 can be affected by human activity, ii) greenhouse gases have a significant forcing role, and iii) climate sensitivity is in the ballpark of mainstream estimates.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=118

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

14. The real science clearly indicates that humans are responsible for recent

climate warming...

Richard A. Kerr (2001) It's Official: Humans Are Behind Most of Global Warming. Science. Vol. 26 pp 291: 566

J. E. Harries, H. E. Brindley, P. J. Sagoo, R. J. Bantges (2001) Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997. Nature. Vol. 410 pp 355 - 357

T. P. Barnett, D. W. Pierce, R. Schnur (2001) Detection of Anthropogenic Climate Change in the World's Oceans. Science. Vol. 292: pp 270-274.

S. Levitus, J. I. Antonov, J. Wang, T. L. Delworth, K. W. Dixon, and A. J. Broccoli (2001) Anthropogenic Warming of Earth's Climate System. Science. Vol 292: pp 267-270.

Been there - done that - old news...

[DeepModem Mom]

5. kick

[donsu]

6. Key West weather has changed too

the weather changes can be all kinds of things. in some areas it's too much rain, in another it's drought, spring coming early, winters with no snow, winters with record breaking snow.... on and on.

I'm really not looking forward to hurricane season! we got lucky last yr. with the storms close but passing us by.

I can't imagine the terror of being in tornado country when the F5s (?) come along.

[thinkingwoman]

12. you live in paradise?

I'm jealous.

I live in Indiana...tornado alley.

We hope to relocate your direction in the coming years. Any advice?

[donsu]

16. well, live where rich come to play as those jobs will be the last to go

learn how to prepare for hurricanes and how to live afterward with no electricty for a week or weeks.

live near a public bus line

check out flooding in the area you want before you plunk money down

and if you actually mean the lower keys: prepare to live on your own for awhile if the only road gets closed.

and enjoy flowers blooming every day of the year. and the marvelous colors of the water and sky

[thinkingwoman]

19. good advice and...

sounds good!

I think I'd much rather live without electricity in a warm climate than during an Indiana winter. Each year I fear we'll have a bad ice storm and lose power and freeze to death. (Ok, that's melodramatic but it was pretty chilly going just 15 hours without power during one storm)

We're looking at the lower keys. We're fine with the idea of making our living off of tourists and rich folks. We're a creative, pet-loving family looking for a more laid back life than we have here. If Key West isn't an option, what would be the second best lower key in your opinion?

[donsu]

21. Key West or any place south of 7 mile bridge

come on down - dogs and cats are welcome too.

on cold winter days I wear golf socks instead of no socks - does that tell you anything about the weather? :)

[thinkingwoman]

22. sounds heavenly

I want to pack right now!

Reality, however, is that it will probably be another 4-5 years before we're ready...got teens finishing up school.

Golf socks eh? Wow, that's roughing it. ;-)

[PeaceProgProsp]

8. There were vineyards in England before last ice age.

And it was only a decade of warm weather before the ice age came.

The warm weather closer to the polls turned off the convection system that distributes warm water from the gulf.

[maxsolomon]

11. that's the pattern in the NW this year

after an absurdly dry winter, this last month we've basically had our january weather: endless torrents of rain. the ski areas opened for one week.

now we're setting record low temps.

even if the naysayers are right, and we're in a normal fluctuation, what exactly is the reason NOT to stop destroying the ozone & burning everything that can be burnt? an ounce of prevention...

[megatherium]

13. We had a speaker at my university, Lee Gerhard, a skeptic.

He is a retired petroleum geologist who worked for the state of Kansas, who believes that while global warming is real, it is not anthropogenic. He claims that greenhouse gasses are a much smaller climate driver than solar variations and Earth orbit variations. He thinks the computer models that the climatologists run are not reliable and are based upon false assumptions. He claims that in five years, his point of view will prevail.

A colleague of mine, a biologist, was really pissed. He thinks Gerhard is a crank for ignoring the solid research indicating that global warming is human-caused.

[jpak]

20. Your buddy was right

I attend AGU and ASLO meetings and there is no debate on the science of global warming - the Earth is warming and humans are responsible.

Only uncertanties are how fast it occur and the severity of the impacts...(scroll up to my previous post for the citations).

[G_j]

15. our gift to future generations

how very generous!

[cliss]

17. The important point here is

what the weather changes will do to our habitat. Not only animal & plant habitat, but human dwellings as well. How will this affect our crops? Do we need to start planting Taro roots & plumeria trees in our backyards?

What will ultimately happen to Africa, where people are dying of thirst and desertification is causing huge problems for them.

For those who love to bicker that "It was just as bad at _ _ _ _ period in time", this is missing the point.

We need to focus on what is happening NOW and what to do about it.

[Lisa]

18. if things maturing out of synch with each other will disrupt ecosystems

... imagine what could happen to our food supply. Farmers have developed crop varieties and farming techniques to cope with climates in particular areas, and we've already seen what kind of social and economic impacts can result when temperature and precipitation exceed expected variability (like the Dustbowl of the 1930s).

Industrial farming has encouraged us to rely more and more on a handful of crop and lifestock species (and the genetic variability within those is dwindling rapidly, as we sacrifice resilience to pests and extreme weather conditions to focus on yield and transportability). I'm worried that the system isn't elastic enough to accommodate rapid, unpredictable changes of the type already known to have happened in the past (that ice-core work alluded to earlier) -- which are only predicted to get worse with global warming.

Agriculture as we know it wasn't around the last time there was a really big climate shift of several degrees (magnitude of the Holocene Maximum). And the models project that we could be looking at an even bigger change this century and next.