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Most of the kerfuffle about climate change focuses on global average temperature change – despite this being a metric that no-one can personally experience by definition. It seems that 2014, if not the hottest-ever, will likely be a statistical tie for the hottest year on record worldwide. But what about other long-term data that might give a clue as to the direction of climate change, in ways that matter more to us all on a daily basis?
One area is weather records. It seems like hardly a month passes with some record-breaking weather event or other making the news. Now, if climate change were being felt, you would naturally expect more hot records than cold records, and you would expect a clustering of hot records in recent years in a way that would be unlikely through mere statistical chance. Also, given that a hotter atmosphere holds more water vapour, and climate change means an intensification of the hydrological cycle, you might expect more wet or dry records to be being set, depending on the location. But is this actually the case? Or are we simply bamboozled by news reports so that we remember recent records and forget about heatwaves a century ago?
Certainly we seem to have experienced record-breaking rainfall in recent years – as a resident of Oxford I have seen the River Thames burst its banks with increasing frequency it seems. But didn't we also experience a record-breaking cold spell in December 2010? And I remember a few climate sceptic chuckles around the time of a heavy snowfall event a couple of winters ago. ("Where's your global warming now?" etc) The country with the longest dataset on weather is actually the UK, so this is a good place to examine record-setting trends. In a fascinating paper just published in Weather magazine (the journal of the Royal Meteorological Society), Mike Kendon of the UK Met Office does just that.
There are some methodological issues here: many records have duplicates, such as two heavy rainfall events that are statistically very close, within a margin of error. There also needs to be a hierarchy of records – a nationwide record is more important than a regional one, a record-breaking year more significant than a month, and so on. Even given the caveats, some trends are quickly apparent, however. Here is the graph for temperature – the top chart shows actual records, the bottom chart includes records as scored in the hierarchy:
This result is striking, and accords pretty much with what we would expect with global warming (although the UK is of course not representative of the entire globe). There is a large jump in hot weather records after the 1990s, and a striking overall reduction in cold records despite variation between decades. (Note that the decade after 2010 only includes data up to 2014, so fewer records are set there by definition.) As Kendon writes:
Since 2000, there have been 10 times as many hot records (204) as cold records at all (20). No cold records at all were set during the period 2000–2009, or during 1930–1939, although there have been several since 2010, most prominently the exceptionally cold December of 2010. By contrast, a large number of hot records were set – for example in 2011 (April, spring, autumn, November and the year overall), and in 2006 (July, summer, September, autumn and the year overall). The period since 2000 accounts for two-thirds of all hot-record scores, but only 3% of the cold-record scores.
This tendency towards hot rather than cold records also applies to seasons as well as individual months:
When considering seasonal records only, the period since 2000 accounts for over 70% of hot-record scores but only 2% of cold-record scores. In a similar way, it accounts for 98% of annual hot-record scores (all but one record) but no annual cold-record scores.
The UK's longest-running temperature data series, the Central England Temperature (CET) series, goes all the way back to 1659 – the longest in the world by far. So where are the heat records in this multi-century view?
Since 2000, the CET series has seen the warmest April (2011), July (2006), September (2006), October (2001), Spring (2011) Autumn (2006) and year (2006) – 7 out of a possible 17 records within the last 15 years of a 355-year series – with only December 2010 coming close to setting a cold record.
So once again, very much what you'd expect if modern UK temperatures were averaging at highs unprecedented in several centuries at least. But what about the precipitation data? Flooding trends are complicated by changes in built-up areas in river catchments and so on, but rainfall data should be worth a look surely? Here's the same graphical treatment for wet/dry records:
Once again, it is pretty clear that the UK has been setting more rainfall records – so our recent news reports have not been biased by recent memory. Kendon writes:
Were we to assume no trends, we might expect a roughly steady number of records by decade – both wet and dry, but this is far from the case. Since 2000, there have been 10 times as many wet records (106) as dry records (11). Examples of recent periods where many wet records were set include 2012 (April, June, summer and the year overall) and winter 2013/2014, whereas the only prominent dry period based on this record scoring system was spring 2011. The period since 2000 accounts for 45% of all wet-record scores, with the highest record score for the 2010s – which is only half a complete decade. The 1910s also saw a clustering of wet records. By contrast, the dry-record scores remain fairly steady throughout until a pronounced reduction from 2000 onwards, the period since 2000 accounting for only 2% of dry record scores.
This is interesting because there is no increase in drought, and a big increase in rainfall records – exactly what anecdotally people think they have been seeing recently in the UK. This is also pretty much what climate models predict for the UK's part of the mid-latitudes, where more rainfall, and more intense rainfall, is expected overall.
This also accords with the IPCC view, which is that there has been no increase in many forms of extreme weather – don't look for a climate change signal in tornados or hurricanes, for example. But heatwaves do seem to have been getting stronger and more frequent, and there is also a signal for more intense precipitation. The UK's dataset about record-setting gives further weight to this IPCC picture with the longest weather records in the world. Something to consider next time climate sceptics accuse scientists of overstating their case.
46 Comments
I may have my wires crossed but your analysis method seems flawed . Perhaps I misunderstand. However, if I am correct, the situation is even more extreme that what you show in the bar graphs. Consider this. When you start recording some factor such as rainfall or temperature, every reading you get is a record. If the factor being measured is bouncing randomly around some mean, you would expect to see fewer and fewer records as time goes on. To be a record, the reading has to exceed the previous record and each time you have an extreme event the probability of exceeding it decreases. The fact that record events are increasing makes the case even stronger that the climate is changing.↓
William – I had exactly the same thought. Obviously not done a statistical analysis, but if you look at the charts they seem to be following that trend until the 1990s, with the possible exception of a blip in the 60s.This is… less obvious… or perhaps not present with the rainfall at all. Would need to do more than a quick visual scan to establish if there's a significant trend.
Mark, you saw the lights on GMOs and nuclear energy and changed your mind on those subjects. That was good. Now you need to change your mind about CAGW, (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming). Did you know that BBC stopped using MET's weather prophecies because they were utterly unreliable? All they got with their multimillion Super Computer was reaching their failure predictions much faster. On the other hand, Piers Corbyn weather predictions are about 85% accurate, as shown by his unbelievable record on hitting the bull's eye on weather predictions up to six months in advance. And he does it with a simple laptop… but using analyses of the sun magnetic activity. His last weather warning:
Damaging storms, extreme cold and blizzards coming.
Piers Corbyn, astropysicist and chief forecaster for WeatherAction said (00hrs TueDec 9):
"The massive storm (map below for 10th 12noon) now heading for Britain and Ireland 9/10th bringing blizzard conditions for most parts and damaging gales or storms in all parts is essentially our top active period 5-8th extended a day or two.
"This will then develop to set up the more Northerly VERY SEVERE SNOW AND BLIZZARD BLAST WITH EXTREME COLD AND GALES for the following period Friday 12th to Tue 16th .
This was always forecast by WeatherAction (from 100days ahead with detail 27days ahead) to be more extreme and severe then 5-8th and that looks like what is going to hit.
"This will probably be the most extreme 5 days of snow blizzards and and gales in Britain and Ireland for 100 years, being more severe than the worst events of December 2010 (which were also correctly forecast by WeatherAction).
38 years ago, I also believed the "global warming" hypothesis, but after studying the data during several years, I finally saw that there is no scientific basis for such hypothesis. On the other hand, the projections based on solar magnetic activity and movement of the solar system barycenter, have shown to be so accurate that there are no possible doubts the sun's influence of our changing climate.
Please check the work of astrophysicists as the late Rhodes Fairbridge, Theodore Landscheidt, Habibullo Abdusamatov, or Czech Ivanka Charvátová, and their analyses going back several thousand years showing and clear influence of our Sun on our terrestrial climate. Just check Charvátová: http://www.klimaskeptik.cz/news/interview-with-dr-ivanka-charvatova-csc-from-gfu/↓
Interesting sly flip from weather to climate there Eduardo. Was that on purpose?
Did you know that BBC stopped using MET's weather prophecies because they were utterly unreliable? All they got with their multimillion Super Computer was reaching their failure predictions much faster. – See more at: http://www.marklynas.org/2014/12/have-we-been-breaking-more-and-more-weather-records/#comments
Hmm… let me think… perhaps this supercomputer can't crunch the numbers because the future cannot be determined from the past, given that we're heading into unknown territory because of CAGW.
Give it up, denier.
Well, you took your time for thinking. And came up with nonsense. Clearly your brain is not capable of functioning in a proper way… it figures, and it doesn't surprise me, because you are a deluded warmst. Now go back to your medication.
Just in case I hace aroused your curiousity, here you will find Charvatová's theory beautifuly explained with charts in a kind of a lecture presentation.
the world records we are getting (or might get this year) are plus or minus 1 hundredth of a degree – which smacks of desperation, when the error is + or minus 1 tenth of a degree..
and the top ten warmest years are separated by less than the error margin
so if we hear, 2014 is the warmest year a +0.57 anomaly, vs 2010 a plus 0.56 anomaly.. that isn't science talking. it is alarmism.
A scientist would say the temps are basically the same with a margin of error. It could be cooling or warming by -+ 0.05C, per decade. we just don't know.
Mathematician, Dr Paul Matthews puts this into perspective:
When we hear, it's the warmest year on record, the top ten years are this century..
so what – it is 1 hundredths of a degree, because I can recall, and cite the press releases and government documentation, that we were strongly predicted to have temperature 0.3C higher, by now, and a rate of warming of 0.2C – 0.3 per decade or more.
Richard Black has quite a good article (on the whole ) on 'warmest' year claims.. (James Hansen has said it is a bit of a nonsense as well – the ranking, to hundredths of a degree)
Richard Black (at the European Climate Foundation funded – ECIU)
"The third reason for caution is that not all global temperature records are the same. Methodologies vary – and so, therefore, do the exact conclusions.
So while NOAA currently has 2014 as the warmest on record, NASA's equally valid global dataset has it in second place. The third major record, maintained by the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia, puts 2014 in third position.
In addition, all of them come with margins of error. NOAA's record for the year so far to October, for example, gives a margin of plus or minus 0.11C.
By comparison, from the same record, the annual average temperatures for all the years between 2001 to 2013 fit within a range of 0.10C.
Often, then, claims of record-breaking need to be caveated with words such as 'probably', 'appear to be' and 'within limitations of the data' – which automatically make them seem less than earth-shattering" – ECIU
yes, the same lobby group (ECF) that fund the Carbon Brief (ex greenpeace – Christian Hunt, the editor) fund ex BBC Richard Black's ECIU.. to show what a small eco-journo world it is. ex Guardian – Leo Hickman, currently in Peru as the WWF's climate change advisor, is taking over the editor role of the Carbon Brief in January….↓
You ridiculous consirtacists see conspiracies everywhere, even someone with expertise moving from one job using it to another. And your job is? Your qualifications are?
Scott: 'mismanagement. Initially caused by hunter gatherers over hunting the huge herbivore herds' where did you get that from? The huge berbivore herds in the American continent were intact despite thousands of years of hunter gatherers [native Americans ring any bells?], they were slaughtered wholesale by the white man to remove the 'Indians' sustenance; food, clothing, shelter, tools, weapons. Then you claim we 'just' need to change agriculture 'to a model which sequesters carbon' to reverse AGW – now I wonder why thousands of highly experienced scioentists haven't thought of that! You could become a hero to all mankind you know, since you know how to sort the world out, suggest you address the UN next. But first learn about early humans and how they lived in balance with the environment, and perhaps a course on soils would benefit you.
Sorry Lao, It just ain't so
When Europeans arrived in North America, they were amazed by the abundance of wild life compared to Europe. Massive flocks of passenger pigeons, huge herds of buffalo, lots of deer in the forests and meadows and so forth. What they didn't realize is that these giant mono-cultures were a sign of an impoverished (in terms of number of species) ecosystem. The hunter gatherers who arrived about 12,000 or so years ago, rapidly ate their way through a number of species of camels, horses, elephants, a giant sloth a giant beaver and so forth. The same happened in Europe much earlier, in Madagascar as soon as man arrived, in Australia some 50,000 years ago and in New Zealand in the 1400's. Early man completely impoverished the world in terms of any species that was large, reasonably easy to hunt and tasted good. Modern man continues to trash whole ecosystems. Look at the beginning of the following articles. Click on the references.
The Met Office had data going back before 1910:
precipitation and flooding in the South west (links to data included)
"The record annual total of 1395mm was set in 2012, but this was only 3mm more than in 1960. Meanwhile, nothing much seems to be happening to the trend.
The wettest group of years were between 1874 and 1883, when every single year was above 1000mm."
No Record according to satellites (similar to R Blacks concerns/article)
Satellites do not make the same measurement as the ground stations – they capture the temperature of the lower 5km of the atmosphere, not the surface. The satellite measurements are subject to even more adjustment than ground measurement – they use sensors that capture microwave emissions, and once launched cannot be easily calibrated.
So there are bound to be differences, and suspicions.
The UAH satellite people believe that the RSS measure is in error because of the orbital decay of the satellite, a mistake also made by UAH discovered 10 or so years ago. There are so many issues with satellite measurements that they come with a health warning. They are not the gold standard deniers pretend.
so why did the Met office publish a paper that starts in 1910 ( a dip in precipitation) when they have data going back 40 years previously, (which was wetter) cynical might suggest they were trying to show a trend…
Months with rainfall above 200mm (1860-2014)
the links above state:
All data from the Met Office
put the 'picture' is pretty meaningless – is my point – just showing the context historically, seems to be well within variability, for a natural background gradual warming (CET) over the last 3 centuries or so.
what do you think the 'picture' shows?
Hmm. with records only going back 150 years you would expect them to be broken almost every week.
Now as far as I know temperatures have never exceeded those in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, in the 20/21st century, or been below those of the last ice age either.
Evidence of temperature variability is not evidence of human cause.
The Green Blob constantly gushes out evidence of temperature variability and the dire consequences, imagined or real, of it.
It has never come up with a consistent mechanism that links either to human activity, and the weight of evidence is that all the major changes in climate have occurred well beforehomo sapiens appeared on the planet.
The only predictable thing in the climate is its unpredictability. Nature has no balance: just an onward evolutionary march into ecological conditions that favour adaptable species and condemn those unable to adapt to extinction.
It remains to be seen whether homo ecologicus (verdanus)is fit to survive or not. I suspect its days are numbered, along with government sponsored climate scientists.↓
"It has never come up with a consistent mechanism that links either to human activity, and the weight of evidence is that all the major changes in climate have occurred well beforehomo sapiens appeared on the planet."
1827: Joseph Fourier calculates that the Earth would be much colder were it not for the warming influence of the atmosphere
1850s: John Tyndall explained the heat in the Earth's atmosphere in terms of the capacities of the various gases in the air to absorb radiant heat, also known as infrared radiation. His measuring device, which used thermopile technology, is an early landmark in the history of absorption spectroscopy of gases. He was the first to correctly measure the relative infrared absorptive powers of the gases nitrogen, oxygen, water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, etc. (year 1859). He concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small.
1896: Svante Arrhenius used the infrared observations of the moon by Frank Washington Very and Samuel Pierpont Langley at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh to calculate the absorption of infrared radiation by atmospheric CO2 and water vapour. Using 'Stefan's law' (better known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law), he formulated his greenhouse law. In its original form, Arrhenius' greenhouse law reads as follows:
if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
The following equivalent formulation of Arrhenius' greenhouse law is still used today:
Delta F = alpha ln(C/C_0)
Here C is carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration measured in parts per million by volume (ppmv); C0 denotes a baseline or unperturbed concentration of CO2, and ΔF is the radiative forcing, measured in watts per square meter. The constant alpha (α) has been assigned a value between five and seven.
Now, what was that nonsense about failing to come up with a 'consistent mechanism'?
Clyde: , you left two bits out: using Arrhenius' equation properly the climate sensitivity is 1.1 degrees for CO2 doubling. Now that's not catastrophic is it? And Arrhenius also was a lukewarmer. He was convinced that a warmer world is a better world. Of course: he was Swedish, they all go to the mediterranean in Summer.
So please don't bring up Arrhenius as authority on catastrophic warming.
I think we perhaps pay too much attention to the actual number of degrees of warming. After all, if the climate over all was 2 degrees warmer, what harm would there be. Unfortunately for us, there seem to be some effects which will have positive feed backs (push it a little and it will go farther than you expected). Fortunately for us, there are lots of negative feed backs which are doing a magnificent job of keeping our climate pretty well stable despite our best efforts to destabilize it. However there is evidence that in the past, there have been rapid shifts when some natural push was too hard for the negative feed backs to cope with. One of the positive feed backs involves our old friend, Arctic ice. Weather is caused by the fact that most of the energy from the sun goes right through the atmosphere and warms it from below. In the classic, ice covered Arctic this doesn't happen. Most of the radiation is shot right back into space, the air above the arctic radiates it's heat into space, becomes heavy and sinks. This powers the Arctic Hadley cell and gives rise, with Coriolis, to the Polar Easterlies. (think of the cold air pouring on to your bare feet when you open the fridge door). Have a think what will happen when the Arctic is mostly open water for a couple of months in the summer and we now have the Arctic being heated from below. The conclusions are a tad disquieting.
Clever moving of the goal posts. Much like your previous post and the sly switch from weather to climate.
Clyde commented on "It has never come up with a consistent mechanism that links either to human activity" and made a strong case of the mechanism, all science based.
You move the goal post and then start talking about "catastrophic warming" which is not the same thing.
Now "catastrophic warming" is potentially possible. Now way to know for certain because we are into new territory here. But that is very different than proving AGW is real. That's an observable fact. How catastrophic it will be considering we have damaged 1/2 the planets ecosystems already with agriculture? Hard to say for sure. One ecosystem function of the biome is to buffer climatic effects like this, and we have no previous data to compare against where humans destroyed the ecology first then triggered the warming. No one really knows.
What we do know is that the damages we have done to the environment have actually released more CO2 than fossil fuels. So it is very likely we could reach a tipping point where the ecosystem buffers can no longer protect us from runaway warming. It's possible.
@Scott: quite. The science is well established, and there is a well-proven train of cause and effect between our activity and global warming. The climate is behaving pretty much as expected given the three key findings that I have pointed out.
So Leo's talk about an absence of 'consistent mechanism' is utter garbage. If you want to deny the current realities of climate change then you have to unpick the whole train of argument going all the way back to Fourier and then write your own that explains what we observe as effectively. This hasn't happened yet and isn't going to. It's rather like a conceptual equivalent of Bitcoin's 'blockchain': rewriting scientific history is nigh impossible.
And as for Hans' assertion that 1.1 C is not catastrophic, well we'll have to wait and see won't we? Current projections estimate that we'll see at least double that, as climate science has moved on since Arrhenius. This is in the nature of science: it accommodates newer findings into its reasoning and refines its predictions.
As for me, I pretty much like the world as it is and would not be prepared to risk catastrophe. If you want to gamble, Hans, do so with your own planet.
I am not aware of changing goal posts? You are the one withe the scary scenario's. "If 12 billion people all will be using coal"has two explicit and two implicit assumptions build in. The implicit assumptions are that the airborne fraction soon will increase dramatically, which has not been observed, and that climate sensitivity must be high, which only exists in falsified climate models. So in summary you are scared of science fiction scenario's.
Don't blame me for "wrecking the planet". I am in favour of changing to nuclear, but the greens won't listen. Also try convincing the chinese as well, they go for fossil for the next 15 years.
You said, "I am not aware of changing goal posts?". I am happy to make you aware. AGW is one thing, shifting to "catastrophic warming", when you can't refute AGW, is shifting the goalpost.
There are plenty of arguments that we are indeed causing catastrophic damages to the environment. In fact many scientists are of the opinion that we are in the middle of a manmade extinction event as large as the big 5 (Cretaceous–Paleogene, Triassic–Jurassic, Permian–Triassic, Late Devonian, Ordovician–Silurian extinction events) The proposed name of the extinction even we are currently experiencing is Anthropocene.
In this context AGW is not the cause, but instead the result of ecological destruction combined with the excessive burning of fossil fuels. AGW not being catastrophic by itself, but instead the environmental damage caused by agriculture being catastrophic.
AGW is a symptom of ecological damages so severe the moderating effect of biological systems on the planet are significantly reduced. AGW is a symptom, not a cause. The "consistent mechanism that links" is increased carbon emissions due to burning fossil fuels combined with the destruction of entire ecosystems that sequester excess carbon. Combined it is increasing atmospheric CO2, which in turn is changing the climate.
Right on the money in your reply. There is no question that we haven't yet reached the highs or the lows of previous ages but what that commentator fails to realize is that we have been in a peculiar period of stable climate over the rise of so called civilization. Some scientists think that we have been responsible for this. We think of so called primitive people as little tribes here and there that had little effect on the climate and yet they wiped out the megafauna of every country that they arrived at. The also burnt down whole forests. Be that as it may, when an organism lives in a very stable environment such as we have been blessed with, it adapts more and more closely to that environment. Civilizations ditto. Suddenly introduce un-stability and that population will suffer much more than a population that has lived for generations in an unstable environment. Our civilization is so tuned to our present climate and so dependent on the next industrial harvest that perturbations that interfere with this will cause massive disruptions. Many think that the Arab Spring was triggered by the small downturn in the yield of the Russian wheat crop. Just imagine one year with the whole Northern Hemisphere harvest greatly reduced. Man won't go extinct. We are like cockroaches; very hard to exterminate, but like many civilizations before us, our civilization will collapse. The difference this time is that our civilization is not in small pockets here and there around the world but is world wide. In a few hundred years, they will look back on us the way we look at the mythical Atlanteans.
The PETM occurred at the boundary between the Palaeocene and Eocene time periods (55.8 million years ago) where a rapid change in climate took place. It lasted around two million years and it is thought that there was a massive release of carbon to the ocean and atmosphere causing a significant global warming.
So as Leo correctly points out, we have a massive change in temperature not caused by humans. However, what could have happened was an example of a positive feedback mechanism. Temperature goes up (from some other cause), then CO2 gets released, then temperature goes up further, more CO2 gets released and you end up in a feedback loop leading to higher and higher temperatures. The initial trigger 55.8 million years ago was not caused by humans. That doesn't mean that we can't be triggering it this time.
Not enough information given with those temperature graphs. Are those records by month? If so, my eyeball says there appears to be about 33-36 locations considered. Are those individual stations or areas of the country? How did they handle ties? Is the time-frame equal in all cases? Records over fewer years are easier to break.
In any case the graph starts the first decade of the 20th century, so the long records prior to that evidently aren't considered. Here is a graph I created a couple years ago of the somewhat larger US, starting in 1880, which shows the 50 state temperature records. They were all around and recording even if they weren't actually states in 1880. It presents a rather different view of things.
I don't think it really matters whether people accept the evidence of climate change or not. As long as the public believes that wind and solar electric generation are the solutions to climate change, it does not matter, because they do not work as a means of reducing CO2 emissions.
Imagine, if everyone suddenly became very concerned about CO2 emissions and atmopheric and oceanic concentrations of same, and wanted to devote society's resources to managing CO2, but we then proceeded to imitate Germany's abject failure and just build more and more useless, expensive wind and solar installations. We would squander our capital resources, drive up the cost of our electricity and utterly fail to reduce CO2 emissions.
So, as long as the societal "wisdom" is that wind and solar are the solution to CO2 emissions, it really does not matter one wit, whether anyone at all believes in anthropocentric climate change.
Now imagine if we could convince everyone that nuclear electricity generation is the cleanest, safest, most affordable and most sustainable method of energy generation known to man.
Again, it wouldn't matter whether anyone believed in climate change, because the real world advantages of using nuclear power are so huge, just in terms of eliminating coal pollution and the scores of people killed every year by natural gas accidents, that we would put a massive effort into converting to nuclear power generation just on the basis of it's mundane advantages.
We were converting to nuclear just on the basis of its mundane advantages until a well funded, massive propaganda compaign spread verifiable lies about nuclear power.
So, it seems backwards, putting the solution before the acceptance of the problem statement, but in the real world, it matters not at all if people believe in climate change, what matters is whether they understand the facts about the one workable solution and see how that solution is also a solution to so many other ills, that even absent a CO2 problem, we should be building nuclear reactors as fast as society can fund them.↓
Nice questions, but chaos theory reminds us that meteorology will never be as simple or consistent as meteorological data. Evidence-based science is always post-hoc and an insufficient basis for policy, by itself.
Science only gives us truth-claims that invite falsification by competing truth-claimers.In order to get beyond beyond this stage (i.e. to stop talking and do something) we need to make wise decisions. These must be shaped by imagined futures (rather than evidence alone).
Our visionless democracies need to ask themselves how our societies would like to live (beyond carbon), then to design our cities and lifestyles accordingly.
Precautionary policies are cheaper than waiting for 100% certainty concerning what is happening.↓
Novice coming in here – and just to be very clear I am sceptical (with great doubts) of any ideas that climate change is connected to the activity of humans.
But, doesn't the question still stand – "(the) current interglacial has already lingered about a thousand years beyond its normal duration…one should wonder what can be forestalling the onset of the next ice age"?
reference: https://www.academia.edu/670048/Significance_of_Solar_Variability_and_Milankovi%C4%87_Cycles_in_the_Current_Global_Temperature_Trends_draft_↓
If you're going to suggest that the current rapid increase in temperature is caused by a natural cycle, such as the Earth coming out of an ice age, then you first have some explaining to do.
Taking into consideration the known and accepted 'green house effect', which has a solid basis in physics, how can adding enough CO2 to the atmosphere over the last couple of centuries to raise concentrations from 280ppm to the current 400ppm not have warmed the planet by 0.7C over the same period?
I shall offer an analogy. If a person at the scene of a traffic accident tells you that the injured pedestrian lying in the road was hit by a passing bus that drove off; shouldn't—before they go into details of the bus—they be asked what caused the person-sized, bloody dent in the bonnet (hood) of their car?
You forgot your medication, John… Amanda has suggested nothing of the sort. She just reminded us that the warming phase of climate cycles, known as the Holocene, has ultra passed about 100 years its normal natural ending. Which is true. And your analogy sucks, because there is some factor you didn't consider in the street accident scene: Was the bus who hit the pedestrian? Or it was the pedestrian that jumped and hit the bus? The effect is the same: a bump on the hood, but the cause is quite different.
Politicians, lawyers and other feeble minded people will always jump to a conclusion that favors their business and/or agenda.
Furthermore, the greenhouse effect you take as accepted, is not accepted by many others. "Greenhouse" is a bad term to call the warming caused on air temperatures by the sun, by the surface radiation, and by radiation from other gases in the atmosphere. In our planet there are convection currents that don't exist inside a greenhouse. The atmosphere is neither a blanket, because it is constantly radiating energy to outer space. Our climate system is not a closed systema as a greenhouse but a very open one.
And the solid basic in physics you mention it has been put into reconsideration by the same IPCC AR5, when it reduced the CO2 forcing from 2.5 to 1.5 w/m2. They were wrong then, they may even be wrong now… again.
When you consider that during the Cambrian or Ordovician periods temperatures were about 3ºC higher than now, but CO2 levels ranged during millions of years from 2000 to 7000 ppmv, then the meager increase of 20 to 400 ppmv can only add some thousands of a degree to the natural warming that happens every 12,000 (take or add a few centuries). But you should read Monin et al., paper, (Science 2000) from where comes out very clearly that during the last glacial termination, temperatures rose first and CO2 levels followed with a 660-800 years lag.
Atmospheric CO2 Concentrationsover the Last Glacial Termination
Eric Monnin,1* , Andreas Indermühle,1 André Dällenbach,1 Jacqueline Flückiger,1; Bernhard Stauffer,1 Thomas F. Stocker,1 Dominique Raynaud,2 Jean-Marc Barnola2
A record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration during the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene, obtained from the Dome Concordia, Antarctica, ice core, reveals that an increase of 76 parts per million by volume occurred over a period of 6000 years in four clearly distinguishable intervals. The close correlation between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature indicates that the Southern Ocean played an important role in causing the CO2 increase. However, the similarity of changes in CO2 concentration and variations of atmospheric methane concentration suggests that processes in the tropics and in the Northern Hemisphere, where the main sources for methane are located, also had substantial effects on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The main feature of the CO2 record (Fig. 1) is an increase from a mean value of 189 ppmv between 18.1 and 17.0 ky B.P. (19) to a mean value of 265 ppmv between 11.1 and 10.5 ky B.P. (beginning of the Holocene).
To define the points at which temperature and CO2 began to rise, we selected the crossing points of linear fits of the records and obtained ages of 17,000 ± 200 years for the start of the CO2 increase and 17,800 ± 300 years for the start of the D increase. We found that the start of the CO2 increase thus lagged the start of the D increase by 800 ±600 years, taking the uncertainties of the gas-ice age difference and the determination of the increases into account. This agrees with the estimates found in the ice cores from Taylor Dome and Byrd (10).
Conclusion: temperatures rose first, CO2 did it later with a 600-800 year lag.
Now, it is not Amanda who has to do some explaining, but it is you who should refute Monin et al. paper, or my comments here.
A niggly worry about the small temperature change so far comes from various ice cores and the ongoing analysis of the mud cores from El'gygytgyn. It seems as if the climate is like a light switch. You push against the spring in the light switch and the lights stay just as they are. When you exceed a certain level of push, the switch suddenly switches and the lights change suddenly. Giya is fighting back but at some point, if the cores are any indication, she will switch to a new "normal" and the crops o the world, which are very closely tuned to our present climate will fail.
Very clever, @Eduardo, but by questioning the greenhouse effect you reveal what you are: in denial.
So what? What's wrong with denying the flawed conclusions of climate models and the general hypothesis of CAGW? After all, I do not deny science as you do. You deny that there are natural climate cycles, that the sun is the main driver of Earth's climate, that the Jovian cycles affect and drive sun's activity, and so on… you seem to like posting logical fallacies here, don't you? Red herrings, strawmen, appeal to authority, the consensu fallacy, and some more.
Now bring real science to the forum and we'll debate it. Abstain from posting propaganda, urban myths or half truths.
"Conclusion: temperatures rose first, CO2 did it later with a 600-800 year lag."
What's to refute? This is called a positive feedback. That's the fear many climatologists have been trying to repeatedly explain. If we should reach a tipping point with our human released greenhouse gasses, then there is a danger that the higher temps and melting permafrost will release far more CO2 and potentially cause runaway warming. This data doesn't refute the greenhouse effect or any other natural warming or cooling cycle for that matter, it suggests the possibility that we humans could cause a cascading event far larger than the simple CO2 we released ourselves.
This is no positive feedback. Some not well understood factor, but quite possible an increase in solar magnetic activity, caused the temperatures to being an increase, but clearly it was NOT an increase in CO2. That's well understood in Monnin's study. Then, oceans began to warm slowly and their capacity to hold or absorb CO2 began to reduce. CO2 started to come out of the oceans, but with a lag in 600-800 years due to the ocean's huge thermal inertia.
But you make a common mistake: believe what Hansen or Al Gore said. There can NEVER be a runaway warming. In the entire Earth's history there has NEVER been such an event, not even when CO2 levels were in the 2600 – 7000 ppmv range. But there has been what can be called a runaway COOLING during the times of the so called "Snowball Earth". In case you just want to study paleogeology, you will see that periods of rapid warming and rapid cooling are abundant, such as those at the end of the last glaciation –(Dansgaard-Oeschger events, the Younger Dryas, etc).
But since 600 million years ago, since the Cambric period until now, average global temperatures have never been above 23º C, and Earth had the most enjoyable climate, huge jungles and forests, life exploded on its surface –with some big extinctions too. When CO2 levels began to decrease, vegetal life suffered because its food was getting scarce. Vegetal life simply adore CO2 of 1000 and up.
Please, take a tour in the link at the bottom, and see what was like during those ancient eras. Geologist R.S. Scotese, PH.D. website is full of undisputed information. But be warned: Scotese is a real and honest scientist and you'll find claims as this one:
"Climate change is controlled primarily by cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in the sun's energy output. — "Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% – 0.3% to Earth's greenhouse effect."
Enjoy a new perspective in your life!
This discussion is really interesting and I am trying to understand some of the links – not being a scientist I am a bit disadvantaged there though.
As I do not believe the contribution of humans to be a major factor in climate change (my belief of course – can't categorically say that) I am particularly drawn to the very good link by Scotese – excellently presented and understandable to the non scientist.
I would of course be drawn to that particular document because it helps to support my thinking and beliefs but then I am not a scientist or expert. The real challenge for scientists and experts is, I guess, to put aside their beliefs and look at the evidence. We all know that Galileo is a good example of a chastised scientist whose evidence was twisted and refuted because his observations did not meet with commonly accepted beliefs. As an ordinary person I feel that the climate issue is kind of similar – the scientific community seems not interested in looking at the evidence properly but sifts it to suit their purpose. This is surely not the role of science.
I am also quite surprised by insults being slung around here which seem to indicate a level of emotion which should only be reserved for our love lives! Insults do not enhance the discussion. Passion, I think, is fine and can enhance scientific endeavour but emotion only serves to distort.
But this discussion is great to follow in any case.
Something from mountain climbing is instructive here. It is called exposure. You may be in a climbing club at their climbing wall doing some very difficult boldering with a thick mat under you. Exposure zero. On the other hand you may be on a ridge in the mountains walking along with your 10 year old son skipping along on a very easy path. The drop off on either side is huge. Exposure massive.
Climate change shares an element of this. The risk involved if the scientists are correct is massive.
There is evidence in the ice and mid cores from many many locations that when pushed by various "natural" events the climate has changed suddenly and in ways that to our civilization would be catastrophic. If our push causes the same thing to happen, it could make the two world wars plus repeated starvations around the world pale into insignificance. There are good indications that we are heading this way.
Continental glaciers in almost all locations are disappearing. Ice is being lost from Greenland and Antarctica. The west antarctic ice sheet appears to be in the process of an irreversible collapse. The oceans are warming as recorded by the Argo array of floating probes, Our 10 warmest recorded years ever have occurred since 2000, Climate zones are moving north (in the northern hemisphere) at about a km per year, Bud burst is happening earlier and earlier at many locations, Methane is bubbling out of the Arctic ocean in larger and larger amounts and from the thawing tundra and on and on the list goes.
However we still haven't had the climate flick to a new regime. So far it has been gradual. A little like pushing on a light switch. As you apply more and more pressure nothing happens until you reach that critical amount and the light switches.
Even if all the scientists are wrong the consequences are far to dire to do nothing.
I don't think anyone denies the natural climate cycles. It is well established that they occur and that the sum of the three Milankovitch effects correlates very well with observed changes. The trouble is that the sum of these three cycles is in a pretty well neutral phase right now and without man's influence, we would not be in for significant warming or cooling. What is left to explain the observed results is man's influence.↓
Oh dear – SORRY – think my last comment might have gone in the wrong thread! Is meant as a general comment! Don't know how to undo. As you can see I am not a computer scientist either. 🙂↓
Some really interesting facts coming out in this thread. One of the graphs that I'd love someone to explain is Al Gore's famous CO2 and Temp plotted against time, but restated to remove the time dimension.
See it here: http://newswithnumbers.com/2009/06/01/gores-graph-done-right
The interpretation of this is interesting. The CO2 vs Temp looks pretty much linear. Whether you believe that temperature causes CO2 levels to rise or vice versa is not the question I am asking. You have to admit that they go up together in a fairly linear fashion. True there are considerable variations that can no doubt be explained by eccentricity and wobbles of the Earth's orbit, volcanoes, solar flares, or whatever. But there is one outlier temperature vs CO2 point which is way off to the right…and that is the year 2000 reading. Why is that point on the graph so far off the trend?
Why isn't the temperature much higher?
If it was on the trend of the graph it wouldn't be +0.7 degrees centigrade as it is today, it would be plus TEN degrees.
One theory is that there is some brand new regulating system that is preventing it, that has never been there before in the last 700000 years. What is that new regulating system?
An alternative theory is that we in a state of unstable equilibrium and it is only a matter of time before we get to plus ten degrees. Has anyone run the computer models beyond 2100 up to say 2200?
Now I read Mark Lynas' book and + 6 degrees appears to be catastrophic.
Could it really go to plus 10 degrees in a couple of hundred years?↓
The moderating effects are the oceans and biological systems.
…presumably the moderating control mechanism you talk about is increased CO2 encourages plant life in oceans and on land, which absorbs more CO2 and eventually brings the temperature under control again?
What is worrying, is whatever control mechanism is in place, it has been the same control mechanism that has been present for the last 700000 years. What we are seeing is a temporary blip. The warming is a lot less than it should be because there has been no time to adjust, a mere 100 years or less. The best analogy I can come up with is if you turn on a heater in a greenhouse and set it to fixed level, then measure the temperature 5 minutes later, then the temperature won't have gone up much. Leave it for an hour and the temperature will have gone up by a few degrees. Leave it for a few more hours and the temperature will level off. The extra heat from your fan heater will exactly match the heat lost through the glass and you reach stable equilibrium.
In planetary terms, the 'fan heater' is the CO2 warming effect, the controlling mechanism is the extra plant life absorbing the CO2. On top of all this are the other effects that have always been there: wobble of the earth's axis, changes in the path of our orbit, volcanoes and solar activity. Yes I know this is simplistic, and would welcome some more scientific analysis of that graph, or even an alternative theory that says it wont be nearly as bad as that graph makes out!
Certainly the experts seem to be talking about +4 to +5C by 2100, so the 'business as usual' scenario could well be +10C a couple of hundred year later. Worrying! Fortunately I won't be around then.↓
This is the buffering effect that was lost when the world's grasslands were largely destroyed due to mismanagement. Initially caused by hunter gatherers over hunting the huge herbivore herds, then massively accelerated by the plow.
The solution now that 40% of the worlds total land surface is currently in agriculture is simply to change agriculture to a model that sequesters carbon. Do that and the lost ecosystem services will be restored, including cycling and storing the carbon in the soils and reversing AGW.
'if climate change were being felt, you would naturally expect more hot records than cold records'
Really? That shows just how much you know and understand. Sounds like the denier chortle 'It's snowing, so much for global warming' we STILL hear from the numpties.
Extremes of either hot or cold are likely to be common. The climate is a dynamic, chaotic system, constantly self-regulating with feedbacks, energy being absorbed and radiated. Tipping points could account for speed up of energy transfer to oceans. Extreme evaporation inevitably means extreme precipitation, which can be rain, sleet or snow depending on what's happening in the levels they are forming.
I have never expected more hot than cold, the degree rise, as you book 6 Degrees explained [?] is minute, currentlky heading for 2 degrees, but on a global scale that's a vast amount of energy.
You're not going after funding from big oil to add to Monsanto and the Nuclear Industry are you?↓


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Coco Martin, Jake Cuenca, Julia Montes, and Kim Chiu will treat the viewers of ABS-CBN's master teleserye "Ikaw Lamang" this Sunday (April 6) as they launch the official soundtrack of their drama series at Trinoma Activity Center at 4PM.
Together with Coco, Jake, Julia and Kim in the special event, are Erik Santos, Angeline Quinto, Jovit Baldivino, and Marion Aunor. Produced by Star Records, "Ikaw Lamang Official Soundtrack" features the theme songs of the series' well-loved characters Samuel (Coco), Isabelle (Kim), Mona (Julia) and Franco (Jake).
Included in the track list are "Ikaw Lamang" by Gary Valenciano, "Panaginip" by Erik, "Somewhere" by Angeline, "Sa Aking Pag-iisa" by Juris, "Pangako" by Jovit Baldivino, "Pers Lab" by Marion, and KZ Tandingan's version of "Somewhere."
[stextbox id="astig"]Meanwhile don't miss the heart-pounding revelations and scenes in the timeless master teleserye, "Ikaw Lamang" weeknights after "Dyesebel" on ABS-CBN Primetime Bida. For more information about "Ikaw Lamang" visit the show's official social media accounts facebook.com/IkawLamang.Online, twitter.com/IkawLamang_TV and instagram.com/IkawLamang_TV.[/stextbox]

subset: commoncrawl


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Reid hopes for carbon pricing bill if Dems keep Senate
LAS VEGAS -- Following a speech that many observers here saw as among the most forceful confrontations of climate change in recent memory by a high-ranking government official, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he hopes the Senate will take up a bill to put a price on carbon emissions if Democrats maintain control of the chamber next year.
"We certainly can't stay where we are; we have to do something," Reid told Greenwire yesterday as he browsed exhibits at his National Clean Energy Summit 5.0.
Asked whether the Senate would return to climate legislation aimed at adding a price to carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, Reid said, "I hope so."
Earlier in the day, Reid opened the annual summit, which he hosts alongside the liberal Center for American Progress, with a stemwinder of a speech accusing those who deny the reality of climate change of being out of touch with reality and calling for Nevada's main utility to shutter a coal-fired power plant north of Las Vegas. Reid said those who dismiss the connection between increased greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures and severe weather "aren't just on the other side of this debate. They're on the other side of reality" (E&ENews PM, Aug. 7).
"Harry Reid is not just taking on Romney -- he's taking on climate deniers, too," environmental activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, wrote on Twitter after Reid's speech yesterday.
How to address climate change has been a fairly dormant subject on Capitol Hill for the last two years, after a push for cap-and-trade legislation stalled in the Senate and Democrats lost control of the House in a 2010 election marked by GOP attacks on moderates who supported the bill. Congressional Democrats and President Obama rarely mention climate change, even as they tout efforts to promote renewable electricity, alternative fuels and energy efficiency.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the de facto leader of the climate-change-is-a-hoax movement, issued a statement after yesterday's speech "welcoming my good friend Senator Reid back to the global warming debate."
Inhofe noted that Reid has not brought a climate bill to the floor since 2008, when the Senate voted down a cap-and-trade bill from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), who has since retired. Inhofe pointed to a series of votes earlier this year aimed at blocking or limiting U.S. EPA's greenhouse gas regulations. While none of the measures passed -- a result of "cover votes" arranged by Democratic leadership, Inhofe said -- 64 senators voted for at least one effort to rein in EPA.
"Now it will be interesting to see if Senator Reid will embrace the James Hansen-backed 'carbon tax' designed to eliminate fossil fuels, which was recently introduced in the House, or will that term also be deleted from the Democrats' dictionary once they find out just how unpopular that idea is too?" Inhofe said.
It is not just Hansen, the NASA scientist and prominent climate activist, who supports a carbon tax. The idea also has been quietly gaining traction in some conservative intellectual circles, and former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) last month launched a new group aimed at promoting the idea of a revenue-neutral tax on carbon on the right (E&E Daily, July 30).
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) last week introduced a carbon tax bill in the House; no Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors (E&E Daily, Aug. 3).
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As 2013 unfolded, the schemes, scams and bad behavior of that small percentage of advisors and investors filled up our weekly listings of SEC and FINRA enforcement actions. We decided to look back at some of the most interesting cases.
If there was a common thread among the cases, it's only that the perpetrators thought they could get away with their misdeeds.
Alas, the agencies watching out for misbehavior were too vigilant, at least from the perspective of those who were caught. Fines and censure often followed.
Check out our Calendar of Woe: 9 Nasty Enforcement Cases of 2013:
1. January: No Sunshine in This State
Investors thought they were getting in on a good deal: providing $300 million for the development of five-star resorts in Florida. Unfortunately, the deal was allegedly nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Fred Davis Clark Jr., president and CEO; David Schwarz, chief accounting officer; Cristal Coleman, manager and sales agent; Barry Graham, sales director; and Ricky Lynn Stokes, sales director, were accused by the SEC of using money from one investor to pay others. In addition, the SEC said they kept $30 million to themselves from 1,400 investors. The case has dragged on while the quintet has denied any wrongdoing.
2. January: The Eyes of Texas
The SEC accused a day trader based in Sugar Land, Texas, of targeting Druze and Lebanese investors through a high-volume trading program. The SEC said Firas Hamdan was well known in those communities in Houston. He promised his program would generate profits, but instead posted losses of $1.5 million on the $6 million he garnered from 33 investors. He claimed the program was working as advertised and that payments were being delayed by the Greek financial crisis. The agency also claimed he lied about having his investments secured by "key-man" insurance and other business details.
3. March: Penalty on the Play
Some say investing is a form of gambling, and if that's true, 31 NFL players found that out the hard way when they were bilked out of a collective $40 million or more in a casino deal. Jeffrey Rubin (above) of Lighthouse Point, Fla., was barred from trading after the SEC charged him with misrepresenting illiquid, high-risk securities in gambling emporiums. One player was enticed to invest most of his net worth, $3.5 million, in the Alabama casino. Rubin's employer was unaware of the deal. Among the players who lost money were Terrell Owens, Ray Lewis, Frank Gore, Plaxico Burress, Clinton Portis and Santana Moss. Rubin was banned by FINRA, sued by the players but, as of September, was reportedly still living a life of luxury.
4. May: All in the Family
Many scams involve partners in crime, but it's almost heartwarming to think of a father and son broker team working together to rip off their clients. OK, maybe not. Charles J. Dushek and Charles S. Dushek, and their advisory firm, Capital Management Associates, based in Lisle, Ill., garnered almost $2 million in illicit profits by executing undeclared trades in the accounts of clients and moving the profitable ones to their own portfolios. In October, the duo was ordered to pay restitution and fines, the amounts to be determined later.
5. August: Fi, Just Not Semper
The image of Marines sticking together and watching one another's back was tarnished a bit by Clayton Cohn, a former Marine who ran his hedge fund management firm, Market Action Advisors. Cohn spent four years in the Marine Corps as an infantry machine gunner, where he was awarded a Purple Heart during his deployment in Iraq, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Cohn, the SEC charged, masqueraded as a successful trader to take $1.8 million from vets, current service members and others who thought they were investing in a successful hedge fund. At least $400,000 was spent on cars, a Hollywood mansion and other luxuries. Cohn's assets were frozen as the SEC sought further penalties.
6. August: It's Just Showbiz
John Marcum and his company, Guaranty Reserves Trust, faced the ire of the SEC when the Noblesville, Ind., advisor was accused of using clients' retirement funds to finance his own startups. The businesses included trying to develop a bounty hunter TV show and the opening of a bridal shop. For his misuse of about $6 million, Marcum faces possible injunctions and repayment of funds.
7. October: Widows and Students, Oh, No!
Acting like a villain from an old movie (think "It's a Wonderful Life"), the SEC accused Thornes & Associates, based in California, of looting two trust accounts worth a total of $4.2 million. One account belonged to an elderly widow and the other was for scholarships. The firm and its owner and principal, John Thornes, were expelled from FINRA.
8. September: It's Just Showbiz II
It's not easy being an independent filmmaker. Drumming up investors to finance projects can be frustrating. And after the films are made, it's tough to turn a profit. Maybe that's why Lawrence Robbins, based in New York City, turned to insider trading, using information he received from his business partner, John Michael Bennett, and Scott Allen about the impending takeovers of two biotechnology companies, Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Sepracor. Robbins parlayed the info in to a profit of $2.6 million. Alas, the SEC nabbed all three. Robbins agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle the case. The amount took into consideration his financial condition.
9. December: Sports Crazy
Americans are sports crazy, no doubt about that. L.J. Hart and Co., a St. Louis municipal underwriting firm, used that fanaticism as an edge to get municipal contracts. It offered tickets to regular-season and playoff games to the representatives of municipal entities – as long as they were retained to do city business. The tickets were worth $183,546. The fine levied by FINRA was $200,000. No word on how much the contracts were worth.
– Related stories on ThinkAdvisor:


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General News of Sunday, 2 December 2012
Source: LAURA BURKE, Associated Press
The year was 1966 and a 7-year-old boy named John Dramani Mahama was standing by the door of his boarding school, wondering why his father wasn't there to fetch him. The Easter holiday was approaching, classes were done, and everyone else had left.
But as Mahama would relate in a memoir, his father didn't show up. He was in jail and Ghana was in the throes of a coup d'etat, dashing the hopes kindled just nine years previously when the former British colony became an icon of Third World liberation — the first in sub-Saharan Africa to be freed from European colonialism.
Today, those hopes are alive again. After five coups and decades of stagnation, the West African nation of 25 million is now a pacesetter for the continent's efforts to become democratic. It's having another presidential election on Friday, with televised debates between the candidates, campaign messages on Twitter and Facebook, biometric voter IDs, plus a culture that has taken to peaceful politics with gusto.
And a leading candidate is John Mahama, who grew up through the coups, became president after democracy took root, and this fall published "My First Coup d'Etat," a memoir that has won international acclaim.
His candidacy itself is a model of democratic procedure. He became vice president under John Atta Mills in the 2008 election, and took the helm with parliamentary approval after Mills died the following July. Now he is the first sitting president to debate his challengers on television. In a race that opinion polls say will be close, he is vowing to preserve Ghana as a showcase of good governance, enjoying "the respect that we deserve, as we have since we gained independence first in sub-Saharan Africa."
It's an ambition shared by the electorate. "We won't allow our country to fall back to what it used to be," said Awaku Yirenkyi, a tour guide leading schoolchildren around the mausoleum of Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana and a touchstone figure in modern African history.
Yirenkyi remembers himself at age 7 during a spell of dictatorship when he stood in food lines with his mother, hoping to buy a single sardine. Now 37, he sees Ghana's success as the fruit of "a collective, deliberate effort" to put the repressive past behind it.
In the debates, complete with signing for deaf viewers, the candidates fielded questions ranging from tackling corruption to family planning and how to spend the country's new oil money. This election, for president as well as for the 230-seat parliament, has its problems. Supporters of the ruling party in one town have been attacked and needed hospitalization; there have been credible reports of a member of the ruling party hiring thugs to disrupt balloting. Isolated though these incidents might be, they remind Ghanaians that democracy is fragile.
"I don't take it for granted," said Martina Odonkor, an author. She was 13 in the 1979 coup and can talk about the fear people felt of disappearing into Burma Camp, the military headquarters in Accra, the capital.
"We heard women were being beaten up in the streets by soldiers because they were wearing trousers, and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. It was an atmosphere of fear, tension and increasing deprivation," she said. "The universities shut down, boarding schools shut down. Education basically stopped. "There were fuel shortages, food shortages and people were accused of hoarding if they had crates of goods in their houses."
Until recently democracy was on the upswing in Africa. According to Freedom House, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, on a scale of "free," ''partly free" and "not free," the number of "free" nations grew from 3 to 11 between 1989 and 2007, while the "not free" fell from 34 to 13.
But Freedom House's Africa programs director, Vukasin Petrovic, warns of "a steady decline in democracy" in recent years.
"The sharpest declines occurred in the categories of Freedom of Expression and Belief (22 countries), Political Pluralism and Participation (20 countries), and Rule of Law (20 countries)," he wrote in February.
"The deterioration in these areas reflects the determination of political elites to hold on to power at any cost, and particularly to hijack elections," he wrote, and warned that unless things changed, "sub-Saharan Africa will continue to slip back toward where it started in the early 1970s." Even in Ghana, after five peaceful, multicandidate elections in a row, suspicion of fraud still runs high, and there are widespread fears that the biometric voter ID won't work.
Still, those like Odonkor who remember the bad times are especially apt to value what they have gained.
Shipped to school abroad, she returned in 1992 to a country holding its first democratic election. And now, "there is freedom of speech and freedom of the press, a huge difference from that time." And Ghanaians make full use of that freedom to air a litany of complaints against their elected leaders. Although Ghana registered the fastest economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa in 2011,spurred by new oil production and a construction boom, Ghanaians ask why they aren't feeling richer. Kwesi Jonah, a research fellow with the Accra-based Institute for Democratic Governance, says Ghana's democracy is a "democracy without jobs, democracy without good drinking water, democracy without roads, without a good supply of electricity." "Health insurance is not working," said housekeeper Judith Ayirebi, 27. It's supposed to be free, but hospitals demand payment, she said. "I will vote for NPP because they will bring secondary education and health insurance. That's what's important to me." Four candidates are running, led by Mahama and Nana Akufo-Addo, who lost the presidency by less than 1 percent in 2008. Both are scions of elite political families. Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister and attorney general, and championed human rights during the coup years. He grew up in England and at 68 still has a strong British accent. Mahama, 54, was born in a village in the poor, arid north and is popular among the working poor. His father was a prosperous farm owner and government official. He grew up a socialist, and though his convictions were shaken by his experiences while at college in Moscow, he retains socialist leanings. Nana Akufo-Addo says he'll make high school free and boost industry rather than keep the economy reliant on exporting raw materials. Mahama promises new colleges and better health care, and takes credit for the high growth rate. But many accuse the ruling party of being corrupt and wonder why basic services aren't reaching those who need them. "We are not feeling the impact in our pockets," said Dorcas Yeboah, 21, a psychology student. "In our discovery of oil, we were expecting a lot of money would be coming into our economy." Geography plays a big role in the election. The north, Mahama's home base, has seen little of the prosperity boosting Accra and the coastal south. In the north farming families go hungry when their corn stocks run out, hospitals lack doctors and many students still learn under trees. But even Accra, population 2.3 million, suffers from frequent power cuts and water rationing. Roads are congested and slum dwellers treat the beach as a communal toilet. Yet office blocks are rising, and showrooms offer luxury cars. Thai and sushi restaurants are cropping up among rows of shops made of brightly colored shipping containers. The rhythmic pounding of "hip-life," Ghana's brand of hip-hop, mixes with the hum of generators during blackouts. "The reason Ghanaians are so drawn to democracy," analyst Jonah said, "is because they have seen that democracy in Western countries has brought a very high level of development, and they want to be like America, they want to be like Britain." He said that if the rulers can deliver the services the people need, "Then people will say, 'OK, democracy isn't just every four years selecting people. Democracy also brings development.'''
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Bastian's back
TORONTO — That's right, I'm back! But there's hardly much going on in the way of Blue Jays news that really warrants a new post. Still, better to update this thing so you all aren't staring at the same entry for weeks.
Happy New Year to everyone. The Misses and I had a marvelous Christmas break back home in Chi-town, where we made sure to check all the to-eat joints off our list. Downed some real Chicago pizza, ate some killer Mexican food, made a stop by my favorite Thai place downtown, made a Portillos run, the wife hunted down a mighty South Side Italian beef sandwich, and on the drive back to TO, we even returned to Roxy's, our old favorite burger joint in St. Joseph, Michigan.
When we weren't fattening ourselves up — and taking some time off from our marathon training, in my case — we did have a great time seeing family and escaping with a serious stash of presents. I hauled off a pile of DVDs (the final four seasons of King of Queens, Dexter Season 1, the Bourne Ultimatum, Live Free or Die Hard, Rescue Dawn, the Deer Hunter, among others) and Kelly drove off in a brand new car! No more TTC unless we say so!
We've been back in Toronto for a while now, but I've been a little busy. Earlier this week I beat Super Mario Galaxy on Wii and promptly called my 8-year-old nephew to gloat (Hey, I let him beat me at air hockey last week, so lay off). The Jays certainly haven't been keeping me busy. OK, there have been some minor pitching additions to bolster the depth department and Reed Johnson was re-signed, but nothing that's been earth shattering.
While there isn't much going on in the baseball world — well, minus the whole Roger Clemens vs. Brian McNamee saga, which is making for quite the soap opera these days. Let me rephrase…while there isn't much going on in TORONTO'S baseball world, I can bring news from the movie realm. OK, it isn't news, but advice: those of you out there who haven't seen No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, do so.
I just returned from seeing TWBB tonight and I walked away utterly satisfied. Many won't like the ending, but I found it particularly fitting, considering the maddening nature of the film. Daniel Day-Lewis was amazing as always and the flick reminded me of Citizin Kane at points. It was so good that I now want to see No Country again to see which I believe is better suited for a Best Picture nod. Hopefully, the writer's strike doesn't stop the Oscars from going on as planned.
On another note, thanks to the fellows at the Drunk Jays Fans blog for their kind words about my blog. The Drunks gave me this review:
"Jordan Bastian, who covers the Jays for MLB.com, probably files more stories during the season than the TMZ correspondent assigned to Britney Spears. Somehow, he still finds the time to write an informative blog.
Don't expect too many carnal anecdotes about Aaron Hill's bachelor party (they all drank $90 bottles of Shiraz while listening to him play Layla), but do expect some excellent coverage that other mainstream media members would overlook."
The Misses and I especially liked the TMZ line. Also, I particularly enjoyed the response DJF got from Jeff Blair of the Globe and Mail. Anyway, on that note, I'm going to move from the kitchen table to the couch and chill out some before hitting the sack. Any of you out there starting to count down the days to Spring Training like I am? My lodging and flights are booked. It ain't coming quick enough.
Ah, one final note. Baseball Prospectus put out their Top 11 Prospects list for the Jays. They are as follows:
Five-Star Prospects
1. Travis Snider, OF
Four-Star Prospects
Three-Star Prospects
2. Kevin Ahrens, 3B
3. Brett Cecil, LHP
4. John Tolisano, 2B
5. J.P. Arencibia, C
6. Justin Jackson, SS
7. Ricky Romero, LHP
8. Yohermyn Cavez, OF
Two-Star Prospects
9. Robinzon Diaz, C
10. David Purcey, LHP
11. Trystan Magnuson, RHP
Just Missing: Ryan Patterson, OF; Curtis Thigpen, C; Tracey Thorpe, RHP
Stay tuned for more…
18 Comments
Welcome back, Jordan, aqnd Happy New Year. A few years ago I was down by the water in Chi-town and needed lunch, so I stopped into a little store front restaurant. Best Mexican food I have ever eaten! Imagine the luxury of being able to choose your eating place!
See, gsumner, BP lists Ahrens at third base.
Happy New Year Jordan.
Gnorman. I don't know why they list him at 3rd-the Gulf Blue Jays list him at short.
For the most part the GCBL's played Johnathon Del Campo and Balbino Fuenmayor at 3rd. Fuenmayer played some ss and Ahrens did play some 3rd, but they really want Ahrens to play ss.
Hey Jordan, glad to hear your holidays were good. I went to see There Will Be Blood last friday at the varsity VIP (I love those seats). To say I was blown away is an understatment. Daniel Day Lewis is just so incredible as Daniel Plainview but its no surprise, in my opinion he is the finest actor working today. What did you think of Jonny Greenwoods score? I liked how unique it was. No country was great too but I wasnt left amazed quite the same was as TWBB.
First off, Ahrens is listed as a third baseman by BP because he projects better as a third baseman down the road. He'd like to remain **** and that's the plan for now, but a lot of people compare him to a Chipper Jones type (in a perfect world, of course).
TOMGASTON: Greenwood's work on There Will Be Blood was amazing. I'm a huge fan of Radiohead (just read today that they're coming to Toronto!) and I was intrigued when I heard he was handling the music. I told my wife that I've never before experience such tension in shots that would otherwise seem calm and serene, considering the landscape. And you're right, while No Country was definitely more unique, I also walked away from TWBB more amazed at what I just took in.
Yeah I read that Toronto was on the tour routing, hopefully the show will be on a jays off day so that you can go 🙂 have you ever seen Radiohead live before? I saw them at the hummingbird in 2006 and at the Rogers Centre (skydome back then haha) in 03. But back to movies, P.T. Anderson always has great music in his movies. The soundtrack/score for Punch Drunk Love by Jon Brion is so good and is the only movie soundtrack ive ever bought. (besides The Singles soundtrack of course…Pearl Jam's State of Love and Trust makes that album gold)
Thanks for the clarification; also thank you for the list.
I had missed John Tolisano in the Jays GCL. When I reviewed his record, I noted he hit 10 HR's in 49 games which is big time power for a 19 year old 2nd baseman and was selected a GCL All-star.
Any inside dope on him?
TOM GASTON: Yeah, I really enjoyed Punch Drunk Love (among the 300+ movies I have) and Magnolia included some great acting performance, though I wasn't a huge fan of the film as a whole. But Anderson is definitely a quality director and knows how to pick unique soundtracks. And awesome reference to PJ's version of State of Love and Trust. PJ is my favorite band and if you enjoy solid soundtracks, check out Into the Wild and the music Eddie Vedder provided for that flick. And, no, I've never seen Radiohead live. I've seen PJ a few times, went to "SARSstock" a few years back to see the Rolling Stones and ACDC, among others, and have seen STP and the Chili Peppers. I'd love to see Radiohead in person, though my wife isn't a huge fan so we'll see what kind of luck I have with that.
GSUMNER: Here's BP's breakdown of Mr. Tolisano:
4. John Tolisano, 2B
Height/Weight: 5-11/180
Bats/Throws: S/R
Drafted: 2nd round, 2007, Estero HS (FL)
2007 Stats: .246/.336/.437 at Rookie-Level (49 G)
Year In Review: After a below-expectations senior year, the switch-hitting infielder struggled to make contact in his pro debut, but nonetheless led the Gulf Coast League in home runs.
The Good: Tolisano's swing path provides natural loft with backspin from both sides, and he already has a knack for recognizing which pitches he can drive. He has a patient approach, a tick above-average speed, and good overall athleticism.
The Bad: Tolisano often sells out the rest of his offensive game for power, becoming pull-happy at times and flailing at breaking balls at others. He hasn't gotten good reviews for his range, glove work, or instincts, and many think he'll need to move to the outfield soon.
Fun Fact: In the eighth inning of GCL games, Tolisano was 1-for-19.
Perfect World Projection: A 30+ home-run producer at a position still to be determined.
Timetable: Tolisano will be another part of the very talented squad at Lansing, where his defense will be watched with as much scrutiny as his power bat.
First NICE scouting report on Tolisano: Never knew he was this good. He could be a huge power bat for us in the future with some speed(hopefully).
What about CHip Cannon I thought he was pretty good or was i mistaken
Thanks Jordan.
Yes, I agree with your statement on the talent at Lansing.
Harry-Chip Cannon did not have a very good year last year at New Hampshire (AA). His HR production was down (17), OBP, BA, OPS and slugging were down. His strike out ratio was up.
It will be interesting to see what we do with him, since Josh Kreuzer, our 1st baseman in Dunedin (A) who was the FSL player of the year last year has now been put onto the New Hampshire roster.
Jordan – I dig your taste in film and music. I too have seen PJ a couple times. I actually met Scott Schoenwies and BJ Ryan at the 2nd PJ concert at the acc in may of '06. I had floor seats and they walked into the VIP area by the soundboard halfway through the concert (I guess after a game got out) and once the show was over and I was leaving I went up and shook their hands haha. No worries about if Mrs. Bastian doesnt want to see Radiohead, you have an open invitation to come with me haha
gsumner, dollars will get you doughnuts Ahrens will be playing third with the big team, and you will see Justin Jackson at short. Speaking of minor league players, check out this link:
Well, if you read the draft report on Jackson, his range is limited. They might make him a relief pitcher, LOL.
Tolisano has played ss, as has Balbino Fuenmayor. I think all 4 of these guys could potentially be the ss or 3rd base guy.
The Jays highest hopes (and highest signing bonuses) were on Ahren and Fuenmayor to fill the ss and 3rd base slot and both of them struggled in 2007. Hopefully, that changes, this year and all 4 of these guys become aclimatised and start moving up.
I think the scouting report you posted is flawed in evaluating Jackson's defense. This is the Prospectus scouting report:
6. Justin Jackson, SS
Height/Weight: 6-2/175
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted: 1st round, 2007, Roberson HS (NC)
2007 Stats: .187/.274/.241 at Short-season (42 G)
Year In Review: Another player who dropped because of disappointing draft-year production, Jackson looked lost at times in his pro debut, but scouts are still high on his athleticism and potential.
The Good: Jackson is an excellent defensive shortstop for a teenager, with quick reads, plenty of range, and a strong arm. He shows good patience at the plate, and many feel his long arms and lanky frame should project for power down the road. He's an above-average runner who should steal 20+ bases annually.
The Bad: Jackson's hitting needs significant work. His swing is a bit stiff and mechanical, and he's unable to make adjustments once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. He struggles mightily against left-handers, often looking to draw a walk to avoid even swinging the bat. Defensively, the worst thing you can say about him is that he's prone to errors while trying to make spectacular plays on balls that most shortstops couldn't even get to.
Fun Fact: During his first two years at Roberson, the best player on the team was Marlins center fielder Cameron Maybin.
Perfect World Projection: Jackson's ceiling is higher than many of the high school middle infielders drafted ahead of him, but his lack of 'now' skills also makes him a far greater risk.
Timetable: The Blue Jays would like to see Jackson ready to join his other 2007 draft brethren at Lansing, but that will require an impressive spring training.
Interesting how scouts see him differently isn't it. I think the biggest difference is what each scout saw in his running capability. One said he's slow off the mark and the other calls for him to be a base stealing prospect. It's almost like they saw a different player. Do you have a link for that report?
The good news I think, is we have 4 prospects, just too bad all 4 had a tough entry season. Hopefully, 2 of the 4 make it up here as ss and 3rd baseman.
Two very different scouting reports indeed, I've read several reports that say Jackson's strength is his athleticism and defense and needs to work on the offensive side. I copied that report from someone who was kind enough to post the article (Covering all the 2007 draftees) on the main forum site.
Perhaps one day the Jays will have a starting SS with some certainty and staying power, the last was Gonzalez wasn't it.
Why are Jays so high on Diaz and Thigpen for their future catching prospectus? If BA ranks them as 2-star and 0-star, couldn't they end up being the next Quiroz?
Looks like the 2006 draft crop is doing okay so far. Let's hope they replenish the farm.
I thought Bourne Ultimatum was awesome, the best out of the trilogy. I for one am NOT counting the days to Spring Training because I'm still playing Super Mario Galaxy. That game is so much fun!
I was surprised that both Thigpen and Diaz didn't make the list; particulary Diaz. I was also surprised to see Purcey listed as a 3 and Romero listed as a 2. I think Purcey is really close.
But as we've just seen in the two different draft reports on Jackson, I guess it depends on who's seeing them, what the rating criteria is, when they see them, etc. If they saw Purcey just before he went on the injured list, they wouldn't have been impressed. If they'd saw him in his 2 or 3 start of last season they would have been.
I think Diaz is going to be a good one. I look forward to seeing him up here as soon as he's ready. I think a combination of Diaz and Thigpen solve our catching problems for quite some time.
A bid chunck of the prospects on the list are from our 2007 draft, which is likely going to be remembered as a real good one for the Jays.
completely agree with you on ultimatum in what as a great trilogy. That fight with Desh was worth watching alone.
Surprising that the jays' prospects aren't ranked higher. Based on feedback from Gsumner (mostly) I would've thought more would be better. I'll admit I don't know enough about any of those guys to get into any debates with anybody but it just goes to show that not everyone thinks our prospects are the be all end all.
Also for anyone interested there is a fun little interview on the fan590 website with Eckstein. Surprisingly, his wife actually encouraged him to come here.