The Rate Debate Slowing

No "Global" Temperatures

Ranking a particular type of field average computed over a sequence of times amounts to determining a trend in that average. Here we show that the sign and size of such a trend computed statistically is dependent on the choice of averaging rules, which will suffice to demonstrate both that the ‘‘global temperature trend’’ is not a unique physical variable, and that ranking this or that year as the ‘‘warmest of the millennium’’ is not possible, since other averages will give other results with no grounds for choosing among them. To illustrate with actual temperature data, we computed averages of temperatures over twelve sites (see Table 1) and computed a linear trend in each case. The trends through the 1979–2000 period were computed with r-means and s-means. The raw data are themselves averaged (simple monthly means: r ¼ 1) smoothing out some variability, but this could not be avoided, and does not a¤ect the main results below. Stations were selected to give reasonable geographic variation, but whether it is a ‘‘global’’ sample or not is secondary for the purpose of the example. Stations had to be in continuous use during the 1979–2000 interval. Missing months were interpolated linearly as long as there was no more than one missing month in sequence, and it was not at the start or finish of the sample. For each value of r, s (cf. Eq. (23)), the monthly r; s-means across the stations were computed, then a linear trend was fitted using ordinary least squares after deleting rows with missing data. The trend values are plotted in Figures 2 and 3. For the simple mean (r ¼ 1; s ¼ 0) the decadal ‘‘warming’’ trend was 0.06_C/decade. This turns out to be the peak value of the trend: for most values of r and s the trends are negative, indicating ‘‘cooling’’ across the 1979 to 2000 interval. It might seem contradictory that the same data show ‘‘global warming’’ of about 0.02_C/decade for s ¼ 0:04, but ‘‘global cooling’’ of _0:04_C/decade for s ¼ _0:04. But there is no contradiction in the data: They do not show ‘‘global’’ anything. The data are local. The interpretation of ‘‘global’’ warming or cooling is an artificial imposition on the data achieved by attaching a label to, respectively, a positive or negative trend in one particular average.

Warming Bad

Impact - Generic

Warming causes extinction - a preponderance of evidence proves it's real, anthropogenic, and outweighs other threats

Deibel 7 — International Relations @ Naval War College (Terry, "Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic of American Statecraft," Conclusion: American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today)

Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. “In legitimate scientific circles,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, “it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.” Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel predicts “brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century”; climate change could “literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria”; “glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected, and…worldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago”; “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes”; “NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second”; “Earth’s warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year” as disease spreads; “widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidad…killed broad swaths of corals” due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. “The world is slowly disintegrating,” concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. “They call it climate change…but we just call it breaking up.” From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be. As the newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolina’s outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that “humankind’s continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the earth’s climate and humanity’s life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, “we’re just going to burn everything up; we’re going to het the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then everything will collapse.” During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries but possible end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War era’s equivalent of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.
Warming causes biodiversity loss, storms, and agriculture
Weart 11 — (Spencer Weart, Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, December 2011, The Discovery of Global Warming)

A large body of scientific studies, exhaustively reviewed, has produced a long list of possibilities. Nobody can say that any of the items on the list are certain to happen. But the world's climate experts almost all agree that the impacts listed below are more likely than not to happen. For some items, the probabilities range up to almost certain. The following are the likely consequences of warming by a few degrees Celsius — that is, what we may expect if humanity manages to begin restraining its emissions soon, so that greenhouse gases do not rise beyond twice the pre-industrial level. Without strong action the doubling will come well before the end of this century, bringing the planet to temperatures not seen since the spread of agriculture. By 2007, many of the predicted changes were observed to be actually happening. For details see reports referenced in this footnote: (22) * Most places will continue to get warmer, especially at night and in winter. The temperature change will benefit some regions while harming others — for example, patterns of tourism will shift. The warmer winters will improve health and agriculture in some areas, but globally, mortality will rise and food supplies will be endangered due to more frequent and extreme summer heat waves and other effects. Regions not directly harmed will suffer indirectly from higher food prices and a press of refugees from afflicted regions. * Sea levels will continue to rise for many centuries. The last time the planet was 3°C warmer than now, the sea level was at least 6 meters (20 feet) higher.(23) That submerged coastlines where many millions of people now live, including cities from New York to Shanghai. The rise will probably be so gradual that later generations can simply abandon their parents' homes, but a ruinously swift rise cannot be entirely ruled out. Meanwhile storm surges will cause emergencies. <=Sea rise & ice * Weather patterns will keep changing toward an intensified water cycle with stronger floods and droughts. Most regions now subject to droughts will probably get drier (because of warmth as well as less precipitation), and most wet regions will get wetter. Extreme weather events will become more frequent and worse. In particular, storms with more intense rainfall are liable to bring worse floods. Some places will get more snowstorms, but most mountain glaciers and winter snowpack will shrink, jeopardizing important water supply systems. Each of these things has already begun to happen in some regions.(24) Drought in the 2060s * Ecosystems will be stressed, although some managed agricultural and forestry systems will benefit, at least in the early decades of warming. Uncounted valuable species, especially in the Arctic, mountain areas, and tropical seas, must shift their ranges. Many that cannot will face extinction. A variety of pests and tropical diseases are expected to spread to warmed regions. These problems have already been observed in numerous places. * Increased carbon dioxide levels will affect biological systems independent of climate change. Some crops will be fertilized, as will some invasive weeds (the balance of benefit vs. harm is uncertain). The oceans will continue to become markedly more acidic, gravely endangering coral reefs, and probably harming fisheries and other marine life. <=Biosphere * There will be significant unforeseen impacts. Most of these will probably be harmful, since human and natural systems are well adapted to the present climate. The climate system and ecosystems are complex and only partly understood, so there is a chance that the impacts will not be as bad as predicted. There is a similar chance of impacts grievously worse than predicted. If the CO2 level keeps rising to well beyond twice the pre-industrial level along with a rise of other greenhouse gases, as must inevitably happen if we do not take strong action soon, the results will certainly be worse. Under a "business as usual" scenario, recent calculations give even odds that global temperature will rise 5°C or more by the end of the century — causing a radical reorganization and impoverishment of many of the ecosystems that sustain our civilization.(25) All this is projected to happen to people who are now alive. What of the more distant future? If emissions continue to rise for a century — whether because we fail to rein them in, or because we set off an unstoppable feedback loop in which the warming itself causes ever more greenhouse gases to be evaporated into the air — then the gases will reach a level that the Earth has not seen since tens of millions of years ago. The consequences will take several centuries to be fully realized, as the Earth settles into its new state. It is probable that, as in the distant geological eras with high CO2, sea levels will be many tens of meters higher and the average global temperature will soar far above the present value: a planet grossly unlike the one to which the human species is adapted.
Warming causes famine, disease, and resource wars – impacts already happening

Lean 7 (Geoffrey Lean, Enviorment Editor for The Indepedant, news agency, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/wars-of-the-world-how-global-warming-puts-60-nations-at-risk-442788.html)

Scores of countries face war for scarce land, food and water as global warming increases. This is the conclusion of the most devastating report yet on the effects of climate change that scientists and governments prepare to issue this week. More than 60 nations, mainly in the Third World, will have existing tensions hugely exacerbated by the struggle for ever-scarcer resources. Others now at peace - including China, the United States and even parts of Europe - are expected to be plunged into conflict. Even those not directly affected will be threatened by a flood of hundreds of millions of "environmental refugees". The threat is worrying world leaders. The new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, told a global warming conference last month: "In coming decades, changes in the environment - and the resulting upheavals, from droughts to inundated coastal areas - are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict." Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, has repeatedly called global warming "a security issue" and a Pentagon report concluded that abrupt climate change could lead to "skirmishes, battles and even war due to resource constraints". The fears will be increased by the second report this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The result of six years' work by 2,500 of the world's top scientists, it will be published on Good Friday. The first report, released two months ago, concluded that global warming was now "unequivocal" and it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are to blame. The new one will be the first to show for certain that its effects are already becoming evident around the world. Tomorrow, representatives of the world's governments will meet in Brussels to start four days of negotiation on the ultimate text of the report, which they are likely to tone down somewhat. But the final confidential draft presented to them by the scientists makes it clear that the consequences of global warming are appearing far sooner and faster than expected. "Changes in climate are now affecting biological and physical systems on every continent," it says. In 20 years, tens of millions more Latin Americans and hundreds of millions more Africans will be short of water, and by 2050 one billion Asians could face water shortages. The glaciers of the Himalayas, which feed the great rivers of the continent, are likely to melt away almost completely by 2035, threatening the lives of 700 million people. Though harvests will initially increase in temperate countries - as the extra warmth lengthens growing seasons - they could fall by 30 per cent in India, confronting 130 million people with starvation, by the 2050s. By 2080, 100 million people could be flooded out of their homes every year as the sea rises to cover their land, turning them into environmental refugees. And up to a third of the world's wild species could be "at high risk of irreversible extinction" from even relatively moderate warming. International Alert, "an independent peace-building organisation", has complied a list of 61 countries that are already unstable or have recently suffered armed conflict where existing tensions will be exacerbated by shortages of food and water and by the disease, storm flooding and sea-level rise that will accompany global warming, or by the deforestation that helps to cause it. The list forms the basis of the map on the opposite page. Four years ago the Pentagon report concluded: "As famine, disease and weather-related disasters strike... many countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression." Many experts believe this has begun. Last year John Reid, the Home Secretary, blamed global warming for helping to cause the genocide in Darfur. Water supplies are seen as a key cause of the Arab-Israeli conflicts. The Golan Heights are important because they control key springs and rivers and the Sea of Galilee, while vital aquifers lie under the West Bank. John Ashton, the Government's climate change envoy, says that global warming should be addressed "not as a long-term threat to our environment, but as an immediate threat to our security and prosperity".

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