Dear Ecolog-L, Our species is ill-prepared for radical environmental change, and we prefer to believe that nothing will ever change in our lives: we will always remain young, our partner will love us forever, and of course, there will be no global climate change. Even when evidence is strong (wrinkles, cheating, and yes... the ice is melting), we want to believe otherwise. Compounding to these facts of life, we face the virulent disease of shortening headlines in the media. So, in an effort to dumb-down the suspected complexities of science, words are cut, and simplifications are made. We arrive to aberrations such as "man descent from monkeys", when in fact the correct but word hungry statement is "humans and apes share common ancestry". Anthropogenic (=human-caused) global climate change manifests in (mostly) non linear, diverse processes. Meaning, we are slow to see the changes, the changes are many and apparently not connected, and once the change occurs, it is massive and catastrophic. Heating up the oceans takes time.... On the issue of the "10 years without warming", I like to use the fable of the frog in grandma's frying pan. This fable is common in hispanic culture, and I'm sure it comes from somewhere else. It was well illustrated in Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth" documentary. And I re-visit the fable here, with a slight modification. Consider a frog, inside grandma's frying pan. The pan is full of cold water and the frog is rather happy. Grandma has a PhD in Oceanography, and she decided to conduct an experiment to evaluate the effect of water's specific heat capacity in biological systems. To secure funding for her experiments, she wisely chose a rather simple title for her (now awarded) grant proposal: "How to boil a frog". In her hypothesis section, she explains that due to the heat capacity of water, frog boiling can be accomplished with minimal stress (for the frog that is), by immersing the frog in cold water, and slowly reaching the target of 100 C. As the experiment develops, the frog thinks it's getting warmer, but keeps thinking it can never get too warm, because maximum warming to the point of life-threatening status has never occurred in all her frog-years. Unlike Al Gore's film, no helpful hand rescues the frog. To her horror, and just before the water breaks into a boil, the unfortunate amphibian discovers only too late, how fast things change in a non-linear system. We are all frogs in a warming pan. Will someone please listen and put down the fire?
Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. Marine Conservation Biologist http://independent.academia.edu/SarahFriasTorres > Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:46:35 -0400 > From: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] 10 years without warming > To: [email protected] > > There is clear evidence that the globe has not rapidly warmed in the > last ten years. That evidence, however, is embedded in clear evidence > that, over longer timescales, the globe is warming very quickly. As in > all complex systems, the rate isn't constant. > > http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5949/28-a > > You're right, Amartya, politicians love this stuff. I think my job > today is to explain to a few more laypeople how science really works! > cheers, > jason jackson > Duke University > > > Amartya Saha wrote: >> "It seems that there are in the last 10 years the planet did not get >> warmer." >> >> Thats an overly simplified statement that politicians love ! >> >> 10 years is way too little time to search for a trend. Then these are >> AVERAGED temperature differences, ostensibly equally sampled all over >> the world. And we know that climate variables are rarely perfectly >> linear in their correlative or causative behavior, given the different >> time scales of various oceanic oscillations. >> Meanwhile the accelerated melting of Himalayan and Andean glaciers >> continue, as evidenced by the highest snowmelt-fed stream discharges >> in recorded history (ok, thats also a blip, but at least spans more >> than a century in certain watersheds). >> >> Cheers >> amartya >> >> Quoting Matheus Carvalho <[email protected]>: >> >>> Dear list members: >>> It seems that there are in the last 10 years the planet did not get >>> warmer. >>> See the last edition of Science, or try this link: >>> >>> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5949/28-a?rss=1 >>> Article title: >>> What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit >>> >>> Matheus C. Carvalho >>> >>> Senior Research Associate >>> >>> Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry >>> >>> Southern Cross University >>> >>> Lismore - Australia >>> >>> >>> >>> ____________________________________________________________________________________ >>> >>> >>> Veja quais são os assuntos do momento no Yahoo! +Buscados >>> http://br.maisbuscados.yahoo.com >>> >> >> >> >> www.bio.miami.edu/asaha
