But again, we do know without a doubt that warmer water leads to potentially stronger hurricanes. Hurricanes can be EXTREMELY costly, in both lives and dollars. Superstorm Sandy cost about $60 billion; Hurricane Katrina losses were $100 billion; Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 5000 people; Cyclone Nargis killed about 140,000. Now, we don't know that global warming made ANY of these storms stronger than they would have been otherwise (although with Sandy there is pretty good evidence), but again WARMER WATER MAKES TROPICAL CYCLONES STRONGER. That is the physics.
And before anyone argues that things have been relatively quiet, just remember that two of those very destructive storms I listed occurred in the last two years.
EDIT: Your comment to Alph is incorrect. The whole point is that global mean temperature goes up--that means more energy. It's true that it comes from the sun, but if you change the radiative properties so that more heat is retained and the temperature goes up, that means more energy. You could actually make an estimate of how much more energy, if you like, the internal thermal energy is proportional to the number of moles of gas in the atmosphere times the heat capacity times the temperature. So if the temperature goes up, the internal energy goes up. You'd have to do something similar for the ocean. You would also need to add in the kinetic energy which you might get from globally integrating the density times the winds, using reanalysis.
EDIT: James, you really need to learn something about statistics--I doubt that any case of lung cancer could be attributed to smoking, too--yet you will find few people these days that would deny a link.
The Climate in general is a very difficult thing to predict. Every credible article will point to this especially when there are questions to whether a drought or a particulary bad hurrican was caused by "Climate Change." If we see a rise in global temperatures there will be changes, what those will be is argueable. Such as Hurricanes which are caused by hot moist air over the ocean, more heat means stronger hurricanes, unless wind currents change and cause that moisture to move into northern Africa causing that area to be more fertile and less hurricanes on the East coast of the Americas. Glaciers melting at a quicker pace could be good in that the rivers are moving higher volumes of water, and the glaciers could still regain much of their mass in winter. The true cost of Climate Change is that we aren't prepared for whatever it could cause because we have no idea what it will cause.
As co2 increases in atmosphere temprature also increase. .. Nd thus glaciers melt. . And trapped co2. Is released to atmosphere and its difficult to plants to grow in region with high temprature and if it happens there is a chance of increase in droughts and flood
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The startling reality:
America's taxpayers paid three times what private insurers paid out to cover losses from extreme weather.
The federal government spent more taxpayer money on the consequences of 2012 extreme weather than on education or transportation.
Overall, the insurance industry estimates that 2012 was the second costliest year in U.S. history for climate-related disasters, with more than $139 billion in damages. But private insurers themselves only covered about 25 percent of these costs ($33 billion), leaving the federal government and its public insurance enterprises to pay for the majority of the remaining claims.
In fact, the U.S. government paid more than three times as much as private insurers paid for climate-related disasters in 2012.
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http://www.askmebest.com/2014/04/11/the-...
As the climate continues to change, most likely a continuous increase in average temperature of the earth, several issues will continue to arise. The greenhouse effect is often mentioned with global warming. The fact is that the greenhouse effect was in place before humans were emitting pollutants and CO2 into the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect refers to the sun's heat entering the atmosphere, hitting water and ice, and then reflecting back out towards space. Some of that heat remains trapped in the atmosphere due to CO2 and other particles in the atmosphere. Some of that heat escapes back out towards space. This is a very delicate balance. If there are not enough particles of CO2 and other elements in the air to trap in the heat, Earth would be a very cold place and a very tough place to live in. If too much CO2 and other particles are in the atmosphere, too much heat is trapped, causing an increase in the earth's average temperature. I needed to explain that to make my next point. All of that is natural, but humans have caused an increasing amount of pollution to be released into the atmosphere, which is trapping more heat. This is why we have "global warming." If humans reduced the amount of pollutants released into the air, we could help slow down the rise in temperature of earth. However, as pollution output continues to increase as the population increases, the temperature continues to rise. As the temperature is rising, more and more polar ice and glaciers continue to melt. This releases fresh water into the salt water oceans. As mentioned before in someone's answer, yes this would increase the ocean size and cause ocean levels to rise. This could cause serious coastal damage to anywhere that is at or below sea level. This includes New Orleans, parts of Florida, and even New York City. Now you have to think of that around the world. How many islands would be engulfed by the ocean? I would have to argue that several would be. But this is not the only source of damage. As fresh water mixes with salt water from the ocean, it also effects very important ocean currents. The North Atlantic Current is a great example for this. The NAC (North Atlantic Current) is very important for the famous England weather (mild and often cloudy) England is actually quite a bit further north in latitude than the majority of the United States. The weather should be colder there than here, but it isn't. This is all due to the NAC. This current brings the warmer waters from the south towards England, Scandinavia, and even as far east as the western portions of Russia. Murmansk is the only port in Russia that is open year round. Russia is a very cold place but the waters of the NAC keep it just warm enough in Murmansk to keep the port open year round. Anyways, as fresh water is dumped into the salt water, this causes a change in the ocean currents. The denser salt water is pushed lower down in the ocean while the cold fresh water remains on top. This slows down ocean currents. The NAC will continue to slow down causing drastic change in climate of most of Europe (at least the western part). This climate change will cause millions of dollars in damage to crops that can no longer survive the change in climate. England will actually become quite a bit warmer than it is now. It would become one of the leading producers of crops. The United States on the other hand will also be affected, but in a negative way. The NAC keeps the eastern coast at a nice temperature during the year. But as the current slows down, so will fishing along the coast. Amazingly enough, The United States will also face droughts due to change in climate like this. I won't go into detail on that because this answer is already super lengthy. However, we can already see droughts affecting crops over the great plains, and eventually most of this will turn into a desert-like state, very useless to crops. Combine the damages of flooding, changing climate in Europe that will damage current crops and have to rebuild based off of new ones, along with extreme drought in the United States, and there is a lot for the cost of climate change. Just think about the world now.
No hurricane in any history was credited by any atmospheric scientist to global warming with any credibility. In fact the scientists were cautioning people not to make a link between hurricanes and AGW. Why because hurricanes have happened in the past without all this crap regarding AGW.
Peg - Nice lecture if it actually came to fruition. But it hasn't. Not a single hurricane or cyclone has been attributed to AGW. Not one.
It is ridiculous to look at this in a short term. Most alarmists seem to be twelve year olds and have very little experience. In fact, California is doing just fine in recent decades with bumper crops etc. It is having a drought now but we have always had them. Alarmists are opportunists and it seems they will exploit anything for the cause. Their cause forces them to focus on the negative and scream bloody murder if anyone suggests that all may not be that bad. That is why they are closer to a cult.
I suspect you know about statistical distribution. if you change the mean, you also affect the tail ends- the extremes. There is no way to change the climate without affecting weather. Adding more energy to the weather systems does create more extremes. Ask the california agriculture industry if they are benefiting from CO2 while their drough continues.
you're either a great troll or really bent on denying what is happening.
Sadly jim wants to stick to the insults and avoid any data or actual science (as usual) nobody has said the California drought was caused by AGW but there is no doubt this is one of the worst droughts and is by some measures the worst in 500 years. AGW can certainly be adding to the effect of that.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/State...
A drought is dry, often hot weather that extends beyond usual cycles, California certainly has regular droughts these are linked to the cycles of El Nino but that has been in a neutral state.
One of the aspects of extreme weather is heat and frankly for those like jim to pretend we have not had more heat waves globally is him acting like the 12 year old her refers to.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v...
Deniers play up short winter storms in just the U.S. while they try to ignore what happened during the previous Summer, Look at the global picture for 2013 and it's not really hard to see why denier comment contracted to only wanting to talk about the U.S. - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/gl...
Recently deniers got very revved up because they found a new record temperature in Antarctica, they keep taking about alarmists using short term weather, but this new Antarctic record was 3c lower than the old record and on just 1 day.
The asker here want's to know (well really he doesn't) where is the proof of increased activity
This has been asked before by deniers and various graphs showing increased activity have been posted, the usual response is much like that 12 year old jim refers to, fingers in ears and going LA LA LA as loud as possible.
But here is another graph - http://www.unep.org/geo/geo3/english/fig...
note the rise through the 90's and 00's in both the number and severity of flood and storm events.
AGW is not causing these events but it is adding to their power.
I note this also from our asker
"Update 2: Alph no more energy is added, our energy comes from the sun, CO2 might change the way it behaves, but it is not adding energy."
If CO2 reduce the loss of heat to space effectively making the planet warmer then that is clearly an increase in energy, unless you wish to deny that heat is energy (if you do you flunk basic physics) heat drives storm systems, a decade ago scientists said you couldn't link AGW to increases in storm and flood activity, but as the data continues to build that view is starting to change.
The real test of a cult is empty rhetoric which jim supplies in abundance but where is this science he claims to know so well, with his top 10% of his class, I see no science and no supporting links in his comment, just the usual waffle.
Lets see if jim can answer with science or just more waffle !!!
There is tons of recent evidence of extreme weather, droughts, floods, and agriculture IS suffering! When it comes to climate change, don't listen to anyone that has a vendetta against Al gore.
okay I know rising sea levels could be expensive, but what else, there is no evidence of extreme weather, droughts or floods being linked to CO2, agriculture is definitely benefitting, so what?
