Is it hot in here, or is it me?
It was another sunny day in Massachusetts today, and another January day when I did not have to wear my coat outside. While I am enjoying the springlike temperatures (mostly 40s and 50s, though there were some 60s in the past few weeks), it just plain isn’t the way it used to be. Back when I was a kid (uphill! both ways!), winter in New England was cold. Freezing, even. With snow, and ice, and, you know, cold weather. Long underwear. Hot cocoa. Snow days.
NASA has named 2005 the warmest year on record. With no freak weather patterns like El Nino to blame it on, this is somewhat curious. What is more curious is a glance at the top five warmest years since the 1800s, when such records began to be kept: 2005, 1998 (thank you, El Nino), 2002, 2003, 2004.
Something fishy is going on, with scientists continuing to discuss the roles of fossil fuels and their resulting buildup of greenhouse gases on our increasing temps. As conspiracy theorists gain some buzz and credence with their talk of “peak oil,” and with the number of ridiculously oversized vehicles topping the market, is this even a topic up for debate anymore? We’re warming up, and we’re doing it fairly consistently. And while I enjoy balmier temperatures and a departure from frostbite, I’m not foolish enough to pretend it doesn’t exist. Or that it’s not significant. Or that we haven’t played a role in this.
The last four years were four of the five warmest years in history, yet there are some in power still claiming that global warming is a myth, that this is all a cosmic coincidence. I’ll think about that tomorrow when I once again leave my winter coat at home when I head off to work. In January. In Massachusetts.
Its just you.
Subjective experience doesn’t establish a pattern. If it did, I’m sure tens of millions of Ukranians would be howling about an impending Ice Age [181 Ukranians have died just this week from extremely unseasonably cold temperatures, and 3,000 hospitalized].
The truth regarding climate is, as usual, somewhere in between the extreme viewpoints.
We understand little about climate, have no accurate models of climate, and can say with little certainty what precisely is producing what effect upon climate. Perhaps if the information improves, a better discussion of climate can occur, but the current fear-mongering is unwarranted, when the dollars could be better spent on actual research into the question.
I am looking outside at the four horsemen. Apparently the world is ending, because I do have to say that I agree with you, Publius. Subjective experience doesn’t establish a pattern, at least not beyond how one subjectively experiences something. To establish a logical pattern, one needs to have objective observation.
Subjective Experience: I say to Streetie “Wow! It’s January and it feels nice out here. I’m not freezing my ass off.” and I put away my coat.
Objective Observation: I look at the weather report and find out that it is 60 degrees F out and exchange my thick winter coat that I bought expecting it to be in the 30s and 40s and get my sweater.
And you see where our agreement ends. The horsemen look dejected and leave.
Did you read the article? The global trends are average temperatures. Yes, there will be places that experience cooler temperatures, even while other areas are warmer. This is why they call the global temperatures average temperatures.
And there is actual research going on in the field. I know that it conflicts with what the President and his say, but that does not invalidate the research that is occurring.
The problem. 3.14159, is that no two models agree as to what exactly is occuring; there is no scientific consensus on how, what, why, or when global warming is occuring.
Frequently, the end results of the scientific research are screened editorially *after* peer review of the science, to achieve political ends that favor an anti-capitalist agenda. [See published reports of IPACC and the scientific dubiousness of Global Warming that was re-written after the scientists wrote it, for political ends. ]
The research certainly isn’t uniformly ‘Global warming is an immediate crisis’ — but you won’t hear about things like the Clinton era USGS scientific studies that cast doubt on global warming, the groundbreaking work of climatologists at the University of Virginia, Arizona State, or Stanford.
Cast the net a little wider. Prominent publications of peer reviewed science show a diversity of opinion on the topic; indeed, even a rather liberal European climate change group recently provided work to suggest that the Northern Hemisphere is cooling catastrophically. Magazines like Science have been burned badly by their blanket acceptance of Global Warming, without looking at the science.
Ok, first:
_Science_ is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It is not a magazine.
“Founded in 1880 on $10,000 of seed money from the American inventor Thomas Edison, Science has grown to become the world’s leading outlet for scientific news, commentary, and cutting-edge research, with the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general-science journal. Through its print and online incarnations, Science reaches an estimated worldwide readership of more than one million. In content, too, the journal is truly international in scope; some 35 to 40 percent of the corresponding authors on its papers are based outside the United States. Its articles consistently rank among world’s most cited research.” (Source: Science’s website [StrangeLand delays links, sorry])
Second, about the so-called lack of consensus about global warming from the scientific community, this is from the 26 December 2004 Washington Post, quoted in entirety, copyright be damned:
“Undeniable Global Warming
By Naomi Oreskes
Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page B07
Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It’s time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth’s climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program, the IPCC is charged with evaluating the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action. In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities: “Human activities . . . are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents . . . that absorb or scatter radiant energy. . . . [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
The IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. A National Academy of Sciences report begins unequivocally: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.” The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and it answers yes. Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.
Despite recent allegations to the contrary, these statements from the leadership of scientific societies and the IPCC accurately reflect the state of the art in climate science research. The Institute for Scientific Information keeps a database on published scientific articles, which my research assistants and I used to answer that question with respect to global climate change. We read 928 abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and listed in the database with the keywords “global climate change.” Seventy-five percent of the papers either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view. The remaining 25 percent dealt with other facets of the subject, taking no position on whether current climate change is caused by human activity. None of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. There have been arguments to the contrary, but they are not to be found in scientific literature, which is where scientific debates are properly adjudicated. There, the message is clear and unambiguous.
To be sure, a handful of scientists have raised questions about the details of climate models, about the accuracy of methods for evaluating past global temperatures and about the wisdom of even attempting to predict the future. But this is quibbling about the details. The basic picture is clear, and some changes are already occurring. A new report by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment — a consortium of eight countries, including Russia and the United States — now confirms that major changes are taking place in the Arctic, affecting both human and non-human communities, as predicted by climate models. This information was conveyed to the U.S. Senate last month not by a radical environmentalist, as was recently alleged on the Web, but by Robert Corell, a senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society and former assistant director for geosciences at the National Science Foundation.
So why does it seem as if there is major scientific disagreement? Because a few noisy skeptics — most of whom are not even scientists — have generated a lot of chatter in the mass media. At the National Press Club recently, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen dismissed the consensus as “religious belief.” To be sure, no scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a “belief” to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action.
The chatter of skeptics is distracting us from the real issue: how best to respond to the threats that global warming presents.”
Lastly, Publius, I inquire about any scientific training or background you have. When you say, “We understand little about climate, have no accurate models of climate,” who is the “we?” Do you mean NASA has no accurate models of climate? The USGS? My local news? Accuweather?
Do you have any understanding of what constitutes an “accurate model?” Can you speak to what standard of accuracy you employ?
Do you have any idea at all of how much money is spent on climate research? Do you have any idea where that research takes place?
You make the claim that the “truth is somewhere between those viewpoints.” I question your scientific competence to make that claim.
First things first: Science was indeed founded for peer-reviewed science publication, but has seen an increasing number of forced retractions regarding the peer-reviewed quality of its work since 1988. By the admission of its own board of editors, it is targeted as a magazine for the general public rather than the scientific community.
I don’t rely on my own scientific background for the arguement, but rather the work of recognized and peer-reviewed scientists in the field of climatology, geology, oceanography, and meteorology.
When I say ‘we’ don’t know, I mean the entire human race. All of science. As to the standards of accuracy, I’ll let the climatologists put it plainly:
Patrick J Michaels , Professor of Climatology, University of Virginia
Bob Davis, University of Arizona, Dr. Madhav L Khandekar [environmental consultant and a former research scientist with Environment Canada. He holds a PhD in meteorology and has worked in the fields of climatology, meteorology and oceanography],
Dr. Tim Ball, Environmental Consultant, 28 years Professor of Climatology, University of Winnipeg.
Dr. Tad Murty, private sector climate researcher. Previously Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans; conducted official DFO climate change/sea level review; Former Director of the National Tidal Facility of Australia; Current editor – “Natural Hazards”.
Dr. Chris de Freitas (Canadian), Climate Scientist and Professor – School of Geography and Environmental Science, The University of Auckland, NZ.
Dr. Vaclav Smil, FRSC, Distinguished Professor of Geography; specialization in climate and CO2, University of Manitoba.
Dr. I.D. Clarke, Professor, Isotope Hydrogeology and Paleoclimatology, Department of Earth Sciences (arctic specialist), University of Ottawa.
Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan, FRMS, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Climate Consultant, Past Meteorology Advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and other scientific bodies in Marine Meteorology. Recent Research Scientist in Climatology at University of Exeter, UK.
Dr. Chris Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario – focuses on underlying physics/math to complex climate systems.
Dr. Keith D. Hage, climate consultant and Professor Emeritus of Meteorology, University of Alberta, specialized in micrometeorology, specifically western prairie weather patterns.
Dr. Kenneth Green, Chief Scientist, Fraser Institute, Vancouver, BC – expert reviewer for the IPCC 2001 Working Group I science report.
Dr. Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia.
Dr. Tim Patterson, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences (Paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario.
David Nowell, M.Sc. (Meteorology), Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, Canadian member and Past Chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa.
Dr. Fred Michel, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences (Paleoclimatology), Carleton University, arctic regions specialist, Ottawa.
Dr. Roger Pocklington, Ocean/Climate Consultant, F.C.I.C., Researcher – Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Nova Scotia.
Rob Scagel, M.Sc., Forest microclimate specialist, Principal Consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C.
Dr. David Wojick, P.E., Climate specialist and President, Climatechangedebate.org, Sioux Lookout, Ontario/Star Tannery, VA.
Dr. S. Fred Singer, Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
George Taylor, State Climatologist, Oregon Climate Service, Oregon State University, Past President – American Association of State Climatologists.
Doctorandus Hans Erren, Geophysicist/climate specialist, Sittard, The Netherlands.
Dr. Hans Jelbring – Wind/Climate specialist, Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit, Stockholm University, Sweden. Currently, Manager Inventex Aqua Research Institute, Stockholm.
Dr. Theodor Landscheidt, solar/climate specialist, Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity, Waldmuenchen, Germany.
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Climate expert, Chairman of the scientific council of CLOR, Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland.
Dr. Art Robinson, Founder – Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine – focus on climate change and CO2, Cave Junction, Oregon.
Dr. Craig D. Idso, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona.
Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona.
Dr. Pat Michaels, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia; past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and a contributing author and reviewer of the IPCC science reports.
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Reader, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK, Editor, Energy & Environment.
Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr., Director – Office of Climatology, Arizona State University.
Dr. Fred Seitz, Past President, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, President Emeritus, Rockefeller University, New York, NY.
Dr. Vincent Gray, Climate specialist, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of “The Greenhouse Delusion; a Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001′”, Wellington, NZ.
Dipl.-Ing. Peter Dietze, energy and climate consultant, official scientific IPCC TAR Reviewer, Langensendelbach, Germany.
Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser, Atmospheric Consultant – four decades experience as a USAF weather officer and climate consultant at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA.
Dr. Asmunn Moene, Former head of the National Forecasting Center, Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway.
Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey.
Dr. James J. O’Brien, Professor of Meteorology and Oceanography, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida Sate University. Co-chaired the Regional Climate Change Study for the Southeast USA.
Dr. Douglas V. Hoyt, climate consultant, previously Senior Scientist with Raytheon/ITSS; Broadly published author of “The Role of the Sun in Climate Change”.
Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Scientific Director, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, California.
Prof. Dr. Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Academician, Counsellor RAS, Research Centre for Ecological Safety, Russian Academy of Sciences and Nansen International Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, St.-Petersburg, Russia.
Dr. Paal Brekke – Solar Physicist, specialist in sun/UV radiation/Sun-Earth Connection, affiliated with the University of Oslo, Norway.
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, climate consultant, expert IPCC peer reviewer, Founding Member of the European Science and Environment Forum, UK.
William Kininmonth, Managing Director, Australasian Climate Research. Formerly head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and a member of Australia’s delegations to the Second World Climate Conference and the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, Docent in environmental technology/science, Process Design Laboratory, the Swedish University of Finland, Biskopsgatan, Finland.
Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, Principal Geologist, Kansas Geological Survey; Adjunct Professor, Colorado School of Mines; Noted author and geological expert on climate history.
Want peer-reviewed science?
Here’s some reading materials:
Baliunas, Dr. Sallie: “The Kyoto Protocol and Global Warming” http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2002/march/default.htm
Baliunas, Dr. Sallie: “Separating Climate Fact from Fiction” Testimony of March 13, 2002 provided to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Chylek, Peter: “A Long Term Perspective on Climate Change” Fraser Forum, April, 2002, page 7.
Daly, John: “The ‘Hockey Stick”: A New Low in Climate Science” http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
De Freitas, C.R. 2002, ” Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous ?” Bulletin CPG, Vol. 50, #2.
Gagosian, R.B.: 2002, Abrupt Climate Change. The President of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution discusses the Global Ocean Conveyer.
Goldenberg, S. B., Landsea, C. W., Mestas-Nunez, A. M., and Gray, W. M. 2001. The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity: Causes and Implications. Science, v.223, p.474-479.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/293/5529/474.pdf
Hansen and Sato: Trends of Measured Climate Forcing Agents Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 26, 14778-14783, December 18, 2001
Hansen, Sato, et. al.: Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 97, Issue 18, 9875-9880, August 29, 2000
In May 1996, unannounced and possibly unauthorized changes to the latest United Nations report on climate change touched off a firestorm of controversy within the scientific community. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the science group that advises the United Nations on the global warming issue, presented the draft of its most recent report in December 1995, and it was approved by the delegations. When the printed report appeared in May 1996, however, it was discovered that substantial changes and deletions had been made to the body of the report to make it “conform to the Policymakers Summary.” Read all about it in the IPCC Controversy.
M.L. Khandekar, Murty, T.S., and Chittibabu, P. 2005. The Global Warming Debate: A Review of the State of Science. Pure appl. geophys. 162, 1557–1586
Abstract—A review of the present status of the global warming science is presented in this paper. The term global warming is now popularly used to refer to the recent reported increase in the mean surface temperature of the earth; this increase being attributed to increasing human activity and in particular to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere. Since the mid to late 1980s there has been an intense and often emotional debate on this topic. The various climate change reports (1996, 2001) prepared by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have provided the scientific framework that ultimately led to the Kyoto protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (particularly carbon dioxide) due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Numerous peer-reviewed studies reported in recent literature have attempted to verify several of the projections on climate change that have been detailed by the IPCC reports.
The global warming debate as presented by the media usually focuses on the increasing mean temperature of the earth, associated extreme weather events and future climate projections of increasing frequency of extreme weather events worldwide. In reality, the climate change issue is considerably more complex than an increase in the earth’s mean temperature and in extreme weather events. Several recent studies have questioned many of the projections of climate change made by the IPCC reports and at present there is an emerging dissenting view of the global warming science which is at odds with the IPCC view of the cause and consequence of global warming. Our review suggests that the dissenting view offered by the skeptics or opponents of global warming appears substantially more credible than the supporting view put forth by the proponents of global warming. Further, the projections of future climate change over the next fifty to one hundred years is based on insufficiently verified climate models and are therefore not considered reliable at this point in time. Full Article Here
Khare, S., and Jewson, S. 2005. Year-ahead prediction of US landfalling hurricane numbers. arXiv: Physics.
http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Aphysics%2F0507165
Lindzen, Richard S.: “The Press Gets It Wrong”, WSJ.com Opinion Journal, 11 June 2001
Lindzen, Richard S.: Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 2 May 2001.
MacRae, Allan M. R.: ” Kyoto Hot Air Can’t Replace Fossil Fuels” , Calgary Herald, 1 September, 2002.
McBean, G., Weaver, A.,& Roulet, N.: “The Science of Climate Change What do We Know ?” http://isuma.net/v02n04/mcbean/mcbean_e.shtml
McKitrick, R. :”Asking the Right Questions About Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol”, Fraser Forum, February 2002 http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/FFarticle.pdf
McKitrick, R.: “Emission Scenarios & Recent Global Warming Projections”, Fraser Forum, January 2003 http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/scenarios.pdf
Michaels, P. J., Knappenberger, P. C., and Davis, R. E. 2005. Sea-Surface Temperatures and Tropical Cyclones: Breaking the Paradigm. 15th Conference on Applied Climatology.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/94127.pdf
Pielke, Jr., R.A., C. Landsea, K. Emanuel, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, and R. Pasch. 2005. Hurricanes and Global Warming. American Meteorological Society.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1766-2005.36.pdf
Sarewitz, D. & Pielke, R.: “Breaking the Global Warming Deadlock” Atlantic Monthly, July, 2000
Full Article Here
Segalstad, Tom V., 1995 The Distribution of CO2 between Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Lithosphere, University of Oslo
Soon, W. and Baliunas, S.: The Varying Sun & Climate Change, Fraser Forum, January 2003
Spencer, R.W., and J.R. Christy, 2003: Global temperature report, 1978-2003. http://www.uah.edu/News/climate/25years.pdf
The Oregon Petition : signed by 2,660 scientists in related fields, and 12,140 others (as of May 2003).
Spencer, R.W., and J.R. Christy, 1990: Precise monitoring of global temperature trends from satellites. Science, 247, 1558-1562.
Trenberth, K. 2005. Uncertainty in Hurricanes and Global Warming. Science, v.308, p.1753-1754.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/308/5729/1753.pdf
These are the tip of the proverbial iceberg in the scientific case against Global Warming and the accuracy of any GCM.
To say there is anything approaching a ‘consensus’ is intellectually dishonest. Even among those who agree with the prospect of global warming, opinions diverge widely as to the cause, rate, depth, and future of the phenomenon. Is it CO2? Is it methane? Does weather have an impact either short or long term?
For the starkest contrast between the ’science’ and the ‘public face of science’, read the IPCC reports of 1995, 1996, and 2001, pre-edit[post peer-review], and the post-edit (edits unsubjected to peer-review).
The environmental movement would gain leaps and bounds in terms of credibility, if ti didn’t rely on politicians to put forth as undeniable claims things that hard science cannot yet back.
Just for a further note; Ms. Oreskes is a Historian by trade, specializing in the History of Applied Earth Sciences.
Here’s a link to the discussion of her article in the scientific community:
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17181
So the crux of the arguement that you are making, Publius, is that since we know that there are causes, we just happen to not be aware to what degree each cause is harming everything, we should do absolutly nothing since we have no hard and fast proof of what the major problem is?
Did I get that right?
Also, an interesting thing that I have been coming across lately. Did you all know that this “gravity” thing does not really exist? I was informed that since you cannot have a scientific “fact” and since everything is a “theory”, “gravity” is not something that would affect the truly enlightened.
Also we only die because we let ourselves, man.
/Puff, puff, pass to the right.
I think this is pretty amusing. You point to disagreements as evidence of lack of consensus. This is the same understanding of science that gets displayed in the ID movement. Consensus does not mean uniformity. Dr. (not Ms.) Oreskes article points out that 0 out of 928 articles published in peer-reviewed journals disagree with the consensus view on climate change. Your argument says clearly that any consensus less than unitary indicates an active debate, and in the sciences, that’s just not so.
I wonder where you copied that list of sources you slapped into your post. The first part, the list of names, is a page lifted from the ID movement – 400 scientists don’t believe in evolution! There’s a debate!
Then the latter part. Did you read any of the hyperlinked pieces? The first one doesn’t exist. The second one, McBean & Roulet, has this to say in the abstract:
“Although there are uncertainties surrounding projections of how human activities will affect the climate in the future, increasingly competent computer models have convinced the scientific community that there will be not only higher temperatures to deal with, but also more intense precipitation events and magnified warming in countries in high latitudes such as Canada.”
Wow, that admits the reality of climate change, and it’s from your own source list.
In fact, only one of those sources you cite actually comes from a peer-reviewed journal. The rest are unpublished manuscripts or policy papers put out by right-leaning think tanks like the Fraser Forum and Heartland.org.
To say that there is NOT a consensus is what’s intellectually dishonest. These are the same pseudoscientific tactics used to criticize evolutionary biology and pander to a particular political group.
Science does not require either 100% certainty or monolithic agreement. That is the purview of religion, and it is wrong to hold the former to the standards of the latter.
Remember the source you yourself cited:
“…convinced the scientific community that there will be not only higher temperatures to deal with, but also more intense precipitation events and magnified warming in countries in high latitudes such as Canada”
There is no question that the earth, on average, is getting warmer. The question is how much of an impact human activity is having on that warming.
The “greenhouse gas” that accounts for most of the trapping of heat on earth is water vapor. 98% of the greenhouse gasses on earth are water vapor. The other 2% is mostly carbon dioxide. Humans activity also always the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions on earth. During the course of a year, sometimes the earth emits more carbon dioxide than humans do due to volcanic activity.
Do we contribute to the greenhouse effect? Yes. Do we really contribute that much? Not really.
And what are the documentable negative effects of a slow warming trend on earth? Not a whole lot of really negative effects, from what I’ve read. “The Day After Tomorrow” is fiction, folks.