The video is by Peter Sinclair, the guy who proved Anthony Watts knows as much about copyright laws as about climate science.
It bears repeating that 2005 is the warmest year on record using NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data, which is almost certainly superior to other datasets (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?“). In any case, barring a major volcano in the next several months, more records are on the way (see NOAA says “El Ni±o arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10″³ “” and that means record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record).
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Everyone needs to watch this video.
This is excellent stuff.
Best,
D
Yes, he does excellent work.
Peter’s videos are indeed one of the best popular denial-busting resources out there. His points are succinct and well supported with ample documentation, and his presentation is always calm and well delivered. Too bad his voice isn’t just a little less monotonal and more engaging, but heh, nobody’s perfect.
What do you make of this?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html
[JR: The recent literature doesn't support his statement -- nor do recent observations. Many people have pushed similar stuff, like Swanson. Just fodder for the deniers.]
The lead sentence of the piece Magnus cites is weird:
“Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter.”
It’s weird because the cited support for this claim is a definite minority position held by a single researcher. “could go seriously out of kilter” would at least accurately reflect this status.
The fact is that there’s nothing unusual going on that undermines the consensus position that we’re seeing natural variability imposed on a CO2-forced warming signal. In fact the scientist quoted doesn’t claim anything different, only that climate scientists are underestimating the length and magnitude of natural variability and that this, in a sense, is going to bite them in the ass because the usual crowd will use this fact to increase their claims that climate science is a crock.
We’ll see if those claiming we’ll see a couple of decades of cooling before warming kicks in with a vengence are right or not, as time goes by.
[JR: I already debunked Swanson here. The next decade will be noticeably warmer than this one, according to the serious peer-reviewed literature (see "Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014"). The link also claims sea ice last year didn't shrink as much as in 2007, but again, that is two-dimensional thinking. The volume was less. This year, probably notbut no one said the increase would be monotonic.]
The glass is now not only half empty. Its 1/2 full of acid.
This seems like a logical possible outcome that has been of concern. I mentioned some of this over at Real Climate some time back, but at the time it was not a hot topic.
Now it seems like the nightmare gets worse, including more unwanted feedback waiting in the wings.
Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference
“The last ice age came to an end between 12,000 to 15,000 years ago and the ice sheets that once covered central Europe shrank dramatically,” added Pyle. “The impact on the continent’s geology can by measured by the jump in volcanic activity that occurred at this time.”
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth’s crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.
It was not just the warming of the sea that was the problem, added Maslin. As the ice around Greenland and Antarctica melted, sediments would pour off land masses and cliffs would crumble, triggering underwater landslides that would break open more hydrate reserves on the sea-bed. Again there would be a jump in global warming.