Global Warming or Climate Change: Which Is It?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by bradleydibble

In the latest attempt to spin doubt about the science, many skeptics and deniers are trying to argue that we’ve stopped using the term “global warming” and started using the term “climate change” in its place. Why would we do that? Well, because the world stopped warming more than a decade ago, or so the skeptics and deniers would have you believe.

Interestingly, as this video helps point out, Republican strategist Frank Luntz put out a memo ten years ago to the Bush administration and other conservatives recommending they use the term “climate change” because “global warming” sounded too scary. It’s easier to get people to be complacent about it if it doesn’t sounds as threatening.

For those who don’t understand the differences between those terms, I’ll try to clarify it. Greenhouse gases are the main culprit for the global warming our planet has experienced over the last century. Global warming manifests in many ways such as melting glaciers and ice caps, greater floods and droughts, more extreme weather events such as hurricanes, and sea level rise.

In other words, one of the many consequences of global warming is climate change. Increased emissions lead to global warming which leads to climate change. It’s as simple as that. It has nothing to do with trying to put a different spin on it.

Unless you’re a skeptic or denier who will try to argue the point. Just like you were advised to do a decade ago.

The Titanic 100 Years Later: Could it Happen Today?

Posted on April 10, 2012 by bradleydibble

“I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern ship building has gone beyond that.”
-Captain Smith, Commander of Titanic

Like many people, I’m fascinated with the Titanic. I knew a lot about it long before James Cameron’s record-breaking film came out, and have continued to study its lore ever since. I’ve attended two exhibits, have visited cemeteries in Halifax where victims are buried, and have collected pieces of coal retrieved from the ocean floor where the ship remains. I also have a gorgeous and very detailed model of it in my home office signed by Millvina Dean, the last survivor from the unsinkable ship—she was a nine-week old passenger at the time—and who died in 2009 at the age of 97.

I find myself thinking a lot about the great ship as the 100th anniversary of the tragedy approaches. Indeed, the day I’m posting this blog is the anniversary of the day the ship set sail on her maiden voyage, leaving Southampton before heading to Cherbourg, France and then Queenstown in Ireland for some last passengers to be picked up, and then finally off to New York City.

Such a human tragedy can’t help but make people think about so many things, and on so many different levels: class differences in society, the lack of enough lifeboats, and the misplaced belief that anything manmade can be infallible. But one interesting aspect of the entire event was the cause of the tragedy. In fact, a number of factors contributed together to lead to the fateful event. A moonless night made the visibility of icebergs poor, and a quiet night for weather—the sea was “like a mill pond” as Captain Edward Smith described it—prevented any wake around icebergs which could be more easily spotted. Both of these played a part in the unfortunate collision.

Fans of Titanic history tend to know those factors I describe above, but few people are aware that there’s another factor with respect to weather that contributed: the winter of 1911-1912 was unusually cold. The very frosty winter that year allowed northern Atlantic icebergs to last much longer into the spring and travel much farther south before melting than usual. A cold spell through much of the US and Canada between December 2011 and February 2012, therefore, played a key part in creating the circumstances which led to the famous accident. It turns out it was one of the coldest winters on record.

I only raise this point, as we look back this week on a such a significant chapter of our humanity’s history, because it makes me realize how much things have changed in a century. Navigation equipment with GPS tracking as well as instantaneous communications all over the planet have made a substantial difference to sea travel—although the recent mishap with the Costa Concordia proves that disasters at sea are still not foolproof.

But I realize another aspect of our civilization’s progress makes a similar tragedy less likely today: our planet’s climate change with constant record-breaking temperatures minimizes the chance of icebergs remaining large enough at this time of year on the Titanic’s travel route to cause such damage. A cruise ship leaving Southamptom on April 10, 2012 and then heading to New York City would have a tough time hitting such a large iceberg as far south as 41° 46′ N and 50° 14′ W. (It will be interesting to see if any of the various Titanic memorial cruises that passengers are currently aboard will see any icebergs that would be comparable in size to the one that led to 1514 people losing their lives on April 14, 1912; in other words, less than a third of those on board the original Titianic surviving the disaster.

It’s an interesting perspective on this important anniversary: that were the climate of today present back then, it’s quite likely that this fascinating part of our world’s history might never have happened.

The Many Misconceptions Regarding Climate Change

Posted on March 27, 2012 by bradleydibble

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” ~Sydney J. Harris

Wow, it’s disheartening to see how many people truly don’t understand climate change but still post comments on various websites. My last blog addressed the cover story in last week’s Maclean’s magazine, Canada’s national newsmagazine. The article, entitled “The Canadian WInter the Never Was” addressed the fact that this past winter was Canada’s warmest and driest in the last 65 years, suggesting global warming may well be real.

Not surprisingly, many responses to the article were posted online including some to an poll regarding what readers thought about the article and the facts behind it. It was amazing how many people think they understand the facts but don’t. I felt the need to clear up some of the most blatant errors and thought it might be useful to to address the more common mistakes here. Hopefully I can clarify some information for those who don’t believe the changes our planet is experiencing are related to human activities, or who simply don’t understand the facts:

1. Global warming is global, not regional; you can’t look to some warmer region here as proof of global warming in the same way you can’t look to some colder region there and claim it as evidence against. It’s the global temperature that’s increasing on average, so never mind what’s happening in someone’s backyard, because that just does’t matter. The Maclean’s article was interesting and provocative because it reflected changes seen across the country, not simply one little corner of it. Indeed, northern latitudes are predicted to be most susceptible to climate change. This fits with the observation that Canada’s average temperature has increased more than the global average. But a cold winter next year won’t be proof that global warming isn’t real. What one city, one province or state, one country or even one continent experiences doesn’t count as proof. It’s what the whole planet is experiencing.

2. Orbital tilt as some describe it—more properly referred to as orbital “forcings” which aren’t only “tilt” or axis, but also changes in obliquity and precession that our planet experiences—don’t explain what we’re observing either. They help explain previous ice ages; i.e. changes that took thousands of years to occur, but not those that take only a few decades, such as what we’re observing now.

3. The sun hasn’t been more active lately and can’t explain what we’re observing. In fact, the last sunspot cycle was the lowest in the last 200 years, reaching the lowest point in 2008-9 which has been described as a “deep solar minimum.” This is one of the reasons global warming has received more attention in the last 15 years—less solar output yet hotter temperatures than usual in spite of it. If the last sunspot cycle had been average or—I shudder to think—more active than usual, we’d be in much deeper trouble than we are at present. This recent solar minimum helps explain why temperatures were rather stable over the last decade rather than continuing to climb, something deniers and skeptics often refer to as evidence that climate models are wrong or that global warming isn’t real.

4. Carbon dioxide levels are only one thing that contributes to global temperature change. Other factors include:
a) Orbital forcings as described above, but these take millennia to manifest, not decades.
b) Increased particulate matter in the atmosphere such as volcanic activity which helps screen out the sun’s rays and cool the planet ( a cool 1991 after Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption in the Philiipines is a good example).
c) The higher the greenhouse gas levels, the higher the temperature because these effectively insulate the planet.
d) And the El-Nino Southern Oscillation plays a part although that’s still more regional than global.

The only observation that adequately explains a change in such a short time span as we’ve observed is the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation, and increasing agriculture. That’s why 98% of the world’s climate scientists say that the culprit is us.

It seems unfathomable to me that some can’t believe 7 billion people spewing 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year isn’t going to cause a problem. Physics tells us these greenhouse gas molecules will absorb infrared radiation and trap heat. This is science people, not opinion.

Clearly we need to educate people better, but as long as there are those with loud voices who have a vested interest in sticking with business-as-usual, we’re not likely to change enough people’s minds. Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated it very eloquently: “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

I’ve done my best to help by writing a book on the subject with the goal of explaining the facts so that those with an open mind can learn the truth for themselves. Now if we can only find more people with open minds…