Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Upchurch]

So when it's cold it doesn't disprove global warming and when it's hot it proves global warming.

Could you please just read the OP before jumping to the wrong conclusion? It's the last paragraph.

 

[Myron Proudfoot]

well, the evil tree-huggers at the World Bank and the Pentagon seem to think it's real and will have serious consequences for the economy and our national security, but we know what wooly-headed lefties they are!

http://climatechange.worldbank.org/

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA552760.pdf

 

[lionking]

I don't think there are people saying the planet isn't getting warmer, they seem to be saying that it's not the people causing it, it's a normal cycle.

Anyone who says that is an ignoramus. It is beyond scientific doubt that AGW is a fact, and it now looks impossible to keep warming restricted to less than a 2C increase.

 

[Genesius]

 

[macdoc]

Alec - there is always going to be the uncertainty of when C02 levels double so that might be the only anchor point to evaluate models.
Leave out the when projection and see what happens with current models at that doubling point

This very recent article discusses the models and concludes the warming will be on the high side

snip

[QUOTE]Future Warming Likely to Be On High Side of Climate Projections, Analysis Finds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2012) — Climate model projections showing a greater rise in global temperature are likely to prove more accurate than those showing a lesser rise, according to a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)[/QUOTE]

Because we have more reliable observations for humidity than for clouds, we can use the humidity patterns that change seasonally to evaluate climate models," says Trenberth. "When examining the impact of future increases in heat-trapping gases, we find that the simulations with the best fidelity come from models that produce more warming."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121108142746.htm

since industrialization began in the 18th century, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 to 390ppm. a rise of about 40%

http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/carbondioxide.html

so when do we hit 560? - 50-70 years given the recent spike caused by China and India which more than offsets the minor drop in EU and US.

Now the question remains - what is the sensitivity? Doubling used to be considered paired with 3 degrees C ....I don't think that holds anymore with new information as above in regards to improved modelling and none of this takes into account any substantive methane increase.

That sort of leaves 4C at doubling as most likely and in my view that will be the case sometime after 2050 .
I only hope for the kids the worst of the positive feedbacks from the taiga/tundra are not realized.

 

[macdoc]

My informed guess is that we are going to experience some 0.8 to 0.9°C additional temperature raise in an erratic fashion, and CO2 will reach 500 ppmv, all by 2050.

I have a hard time seeing how you get to that as you are postulating a slowing of sensitivity and not accounting for the warmth that is inherently going to occur even if we stopped cold now.
The radiative balance would be reached at 1.6 or 1.8 C ( .3-.8 above now ) about 30 years out even holding at 390. < that's your entire assessment.

The upper line is often what is referred to as the ‘climate change commitment’ (for instance Wigley, 2005). This is the warming you get if we keep CO2 (and other GHG and pollutant levels) constant at today’s values. (Technically, the figure shows the case staying at year 2000 values). In such a scenario, the planet still has a radiative imbalance, and the warming will continue until the oceans have warmed sufficiently to equalise the situation – giving an additional 0.3 to 0.8ºC warming over the 21st Century. Thus the conclusion has been that because of climate inertia, further warming is inevitable.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/climate-change-commitments/

Without holding at 390 and instead reaching 500 ppm, then there has to be an incremental gain unless you assume some sort of negative feedback or aerosol.

 

[BenBurch]

So when it's cold it doesn't disprove global warming and when it's hot it proves global warming.

When you trivialize reality in that way, you can offhandedly pooh-pooh anything at all.

This is not an honest way to proceed.

 

[Spindrift]

We had a draught this past summer...

You can just close the window to fix that.

 

[Halfcentaur]

This weather is just insane. This is the third winter in a row here in OKC that we seem to be skipping most of Winter. Thinking back, a frigid 3-4 months in a row seems to be nothing but nostalgia at this point. The climate used to follow a regular pattern for the first 30 years or so of my life, I'd like to go back to that, but most of my friends enjoy the heat. I'm a weirdo snow ape. I got to turn off my air conditioner for about 2 weeks in November, but now it's bee n back on every day with 75-80 degree days,... in December.

Regardless of what's doing it, this is crazy. When it's not insanely warm, we have flash record breaking ice storms that are worse than anything since we've been keeping records here.

 

[ConspiRaider]

And in retaliation ebil libruls destroyed the Hostess company.

Oh yes yes, Big Ben. First they destroy the world and then Twinkie. These guys. Never turn your back on a Ding Dong, I always say.

 

[lionking]

He's a bona fide climate scientist. Can be a tad cryptic and his opinions can be acerbic but he's definitely one of the good guys

Thanks, good to know. He looks like an outlier though, predicting a mere 0.8C rise by 2050. I hope he's right, but if so, countless others will be wrong.

 

[Halfcentaur]

In many ways I think Al Gore is the worst thing that happened to this "debate". It seems like his taking up the banner and endorsement of this issue made it into something you accept based on your political affiliation, when before I don't recall it being such a partisan issue in the early and mid 90s.

Captain Planet must be rolling in his grave.

 

[ehcks]

If you were born after April 1985, you have never experienced a below-average temperature month.

http://grist.org/news/if-youre-27-or-younger-youve-never-experienced-a-colder-than-average-month/

But there's no global warming.

 

[aleCcowaN]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121108142746.htm


http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/carbondioxide.html

Here's the paper

Here's the supplementary materials

For what I read, the paper has little to nothing to do with the assertions in the ScienceDaily's piece that cites it [http:// www. sciencedaily. com/releases/ 2012/11/ 121108142746.htm -remove blank spaces] which is taken from UCAR's site. Notice the image there ("©UCAR. Image by Carlye Calvin, based on Fasullo and Trenberth, Science, 2012") which is not related to any image in the cited paper, including its supplementary materials.

Help me check that out, but so far it looks like another stretch to promote the notion of an impending horrible warming.

Anyway, we can discuss it further, as it probably is about what the collaborating team wanted to comment but couldn't be included in the paper as meeting a valid scientific criteria. The notion of "models that represented certain partial atmospheric process better than others showed more warming then they are most likely to be accurate" is like the old time "Kodak films developed show better blues so you're likely to get better photos using Kodak". As I liked browns and greens better I used Agfa-Gevaert.

 

[bobwtfomg]

Good question!

I think it needs something big and a shift in the approach. The government panels were not efficient enough, as we have seen in the past 20 years or so. And the time is pretty much up. The only way would be something like this imho, e.g.:

All the big (and not so big) environmental organizations, all the national parks, conservation organizations, pretty much all the activists, biologists, who try to protect and preserve endangered species should agree on a statement. Bring the heads of these organizations to a big summit. Make a big world wide press conference. And declare something like the following:
If there won't be...(very specific measures and timelines)... then we will end all our efforts in trying to protect and preserve our flora and fauna. We do not see any meaning to continue our efforts if we, as a global society, don't act now. Because in 50 - 100 years, we will have a lot bigger issues and problems than trying to protect some species from extinction, preserving rainforest etc... Our work now is getting more and more useless. We are aware that this is a dramatic event but the time is running out now. This is a final attempt.

I know that this sounds like a drama script. But people need to understand the urgency of this issue. And the only chance (if there is any) is to make this issue number one priority for everyone. We learned that it does not work in trying to make it number one for the politics (I don't even blame them). If the people won't change, why should politics? The people need to see drastic measures now. Otherwise they won't change. And a global drastic measure would be if pretty much all the environmental organizations would full stop their work. But why environmental organizations? Because most of those people involved seem to care about this planet and have the knowledge to realize what is at stakes. Maybe they can find a common ground for such a drastic move.


Let me say that I am following the AGW discussions for many years now. And we got through this:
- Climate change? Huh?
- Climate change? They can't even predict the weather for the next 5 weeks. They pretend to predict the climate for next 50 years? Hahahaaa
- Global warming? Bring it on, I love the summer.
- Climate is always changing...
- AGW? that's not even possible.
- Climate change? Yeah maybe, but as long as we can't predict the outcome, we shouldn't rush in our actions.
- Climate change? Yeah maybe, but all the measures are for the profits of some corporations. No thanks.
- AGW/Climate change? Ok, but it's not dangerous. We'll deal with it.
- Climate change? True, it's the sun.
- AGW/Climate change? We can't do anything about it. Let's save our money for other things.
- AGW/Climate change? We'll all die anyway...(bible says so)

Well, it is some kind of tragic comedy imho that we are now at the last two points in this list. Seems to me, the deniers have (almost) won.

Are you serious?

Do you really think enviromental organisations threatening to stop their activities would have any effect?

Are you really suggesting that those organisations actively campaigning against climate change should threaten to stop campaigning against climate change unless..(very specific measures and timelines)..?

And the activists too the people who are willing to risk arrest to try and physically stop mountain top removal coal mining or prevent the building of new coal power stations, you want them to say "hey unless you stop opening new mines and power stations we're going to stop protesting and just go home and let you get on with it" ?

Either you haven't really thought this through or you're pulling my leg

 

[bobwtfomg]

He's a bona fide climate scientist. Can be a tad cryptic and his opinions can be acerbic but he's definitely one of the good guys

Really I'm sure in one of his comments he said he was a civil engineer, or am I confusing him with someone else?

 

[ConspiRaider]

If you were born after April 1985, you have never experienced a below-average temperature month.

http://grist.org/news/if-youre-27-or-younger-youve-never-experienced-a-colder-than-average-month/

But there's no global warming.

Good one.

I don't post a lot of links but here's one (bad Raidey link-poster, no raspberry kuchen for you tonight!) from The Rolling Stone. Good article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We'd have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.

Yes, this coal and gas and oil is still technically in the soil. But it's already economically aboveground – it's figured into share prices, companies are borrowing money against it, nations are basing their budgets on the presumed returns from their patrimony. It explains why the big fossil-fuel companies have fought so hard to prevent the regulation of carbon dioxide – those reserves are their primary asset, the holding that gives their companies their value. It's why they've worked so hard these past years to figure out how to unlock the oil in Canada's tar sands, or how to drill miles beneath the sea, or how to frack the Appalachians.

 

[macdoc]

Alec - even ignoring a variety of sources that are indicating the IPCC is too conservative and the models are more likely correct on the high side ( which is one reason MIT revised their assessment upward )

How can you square 500 ppm and .8 when there is .8 already embedded in the imbalance plus the .8 we are already experiencing.

If you mean to say .8 already extant, plus .8 embedded and an additional projected .8 for a 2.4C total - then I might say yeah tho not likely at 2100 but perhaps 50-70 years if BAU.

That puts you in the ballpark of the IPCC at least

The value for ECS obtained from global climate models varies by approximately a factor of two, with the ECS of models used in the 2007 IPCC report ranging from 2.1 to 4.4°C for doubled CO2. This model sensitivity range is an emergent property of the models themselves, and arises due to the different approximations of physical processes which are built into each model. However, this senstivity range has not changed significantly over the past two decades, despite climate models undergoing constant revisions.

this takes a more extensive look at the sensitivity paper

From this, FS12 conclude as follows.

"These results suggest a systematic deficiency in the drying effect of either subsident circulations or spurious mixing of moister air into the region in low-sensitivity models that directly relate to their projected changes in cloud amount and albedo. Although the lower-sensitivity models are clearly at odds with observations, extrapolating the consequences of these model biases to climate sensitivity is nontrivial"
"...the results strongly suggest that the more sensitive models perform better, and indeed the less sensitive models are not adequate in replicating vital aspects of today’s climate. The correct simulation of the vertical structure of RH and clouds should be a prerequisite for developing confidence in projections for the future."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/fasullo-trenberth-2012.html

That's pretty clear from the paper that they consider the higher sensitivity models to be more accurate and that means 4.4 is more likely than 2.4 for a doubling.

If the author makes the statement

As Fasullo told The Guardian, "our findings indicate that warming is likely to be on the high side of current projections."

then surely you have agree that IS one of the conclusions and to respect his thoughts on his own paper.

Whether the paper is correct is a different issue but if the higher sensitivity models reflect actual measurements more accurately, which the paper claims is the case....it is kinda hard to argue with his conclusions.

The continual under estimating of AGW progress would seem to substantiate that.

What I wonder with this bit of flattening in the last little while.....are we seeing way more aerosol impact in a return to the global dimming of the 70s but this time from India/China instead of US/Europe?

or are there more La Nina's helping to bury the heat?

 

[aleCcowaN]

There's a local saying which is shortened to "...but nobody finds the poncho!". A lot of explanations but what we need explained is not really understood.

I tend to think in 1998 as a year +0.3°C above the contemporary normal, and this year as a pretty normal year, then the warming continues, slow but certain.

The mid and deep ocean certainly will manage 10²⁴ J without hesitating before allowing the planet to warm another °C, and many Niñas, global dimming, weak solar cycles, and a bunch of other explanations will be used to justify it. The important thing is that just buying us some decades.

The problem continue to be important, urgent and characterized by a worsening trend.

 

[bobwtfomg]

About the Cabot Institute, it seems to be more economics oriented and pretty far from climate science. I may be wrong, but the "about us" part is not very promising. At least we don't need to buy what they bought.

.

How is it relevant where he delivered the lecture, what are you trying to suggest because he talks to economists about climate change his science is no good

Professor Kevin Anderson is the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research;[1] holds a joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and School of Environmental Sciences at University of East Anglia