Global Warming Is Epic, Long-Term Study Says - CNN

[WillyT]

Global warming is epic, long-term study says
By Ben Brumfield, CNN
updated 6:57 AM EST, Fri March 8, 2013


A scientist looks at an ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide coring site.

<snip>

(CNN) -- Global warming has propelled Earth's climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest -- in just one century. A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

"If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record," he said. It is a good indicator of just how fast man-made climate change has progressed. A century is a very short period of time for such a spike.

It's supposed to be cold

The Earth was very cold at the turn of the 20th century. The decade from 1900 to 1909 was colder than 95% of the last 11,300 years, the study found. Fast forward to the turn of the 21st century, and the opposite occurs. Between 2000 and 2009, it was hotter than about 75% of the last 11,300 years.

If not for man-made influences, the Earth would be in a very cold phase right now and getting even colder, according the joint study by Oregon State University and Harvard University. Marcott was the lead author of the report on its results.

To boot, the range of temperatures from cold to hot produced since the industrial revolution began are about the same as the 11,000 years before it, said Candace Major from the National Science Foundation, "but this change has happened a lot more quickly."

Far from natural warming...

Much More: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/08/world/world-climate-change/?google_editors_picks=true

[AverageJoe90]

1. Well.....

While it certainly is true beyond all doubts, that man-made Co2 emissions have been affecting the climate; nobody's questioning that.....the one problem with this study, is that I'm not really convinced that we would necessarily have been in a "very cold" phase right now, without anthropogenic emissions.

I'm open to the idea, but it's pretty clear from the get-go that there needs to be a LOT more research where that one particular claim is concerned.

[pampango]

2. Check out this graph from Maddow.

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New research suggests average global temperatures were higher in the past decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, aims to give a global overview of Earth's temperatures over the past 11,300 years -- a relatively balmy period known as the Holocene that began after the last major ice age ended and encompasses all of recorded human civilization.

I suppose the right's response will be varied. Some will say there's a communist conspiracy to manipulate the data by those determined to destroy the free-enterprise system. Others might try to suggest there's a remarkable coincidence, and that the sharp, unprecedented spike occurred naturally.

And then there will be a third group of conservatives who'll concede that global warming is real and the science is credible, but to address the crisis might hurt our short-term economy, and therefore, it's better left ignored, consequences for humanity be damned.

Pushing back in the other direction will be President Obama's newest administration nominees: Gina McCarthy, an expert on federal air quality law who's been nominated to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, and physicist Ernest Moniz, who's been tapped to lead the Department of Energy. If both can overcome Republican opposition in the Senate, they'll have major responsibilities in shaping a climate policy, including regulatory powers that can combat the crisis without congressional input.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/08/17236930-a-climate-crisis-wake-up-call

[WillyT]

3. Thank You For That !!!

[pscot]

4. It gets all spikey there at the end

Like something's gonna get reamed.