Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Thunder]

I dont know where you would dig it up, but the CIA did a pretty detailed report on current expectations, and how these changes could affect the US as a political entity

well I mean for example, did anyone predict that AGW might cause the Arctic to get warmer, thereby sending its "cold" air deeper south into North America, giving us such a cold winter?

I never read or heard such a prediction. It just appears to me that the number of possibilities are too great, and variables too many, to really say with any certainty what WILL happen....let alone what is likely to occur.

 

[Dinwar]

Science is based on establishing testable predictions. If we're not allowed to make predictions about climate change, we're not allowed to use the scientific method (can't test what ain't there). I'll grant you that making drastic changes and curtailing liberty on the basis of a handful of simulations isn't a good idea (nor is anyone proposing we do so), but as far as predictions go? That's sort of a necessary step.

The real question is what value those predictions have. GCMs may be accurate for indicating trends, but specific impacts may still be beyond our ability to determine. Or some forcing mechanism may spring up that we didn't account for, which opperates on a regional or local scale and which may exacerbate or mitigate the affects (say, building levies or dams, or the failing of levies or dams).

 

[Thunder]

ok, I can accept making predictions. But I think given all the many climates & sub-climates, and all the other variables that effect temperature, humdity, air pressure, etc etc, perhaps we should limit our acceptance of AGW predictions to the less "scary" ones, and focus more on the more conservative and more widely accepted predictions of climatic change.

i.e...no more talk about Ground Zero being flooded.

 

[Dinwar]

The best approach (and for a more detailed search look up the book "Useless Arithmetic") is to take the GCMs as a general guide--things will get warmer in general, sea levels will rise in general, etc--rather than as making specific predictions--water levels will rise 17.53' in the next 5 years, for example. I've never seen a GCM that accurately predicted the Holocene weather paterns for any location once you get into details (and I've seen a number of them try). And a general prediction is still very useful. In fact, I'd argue it's MORE useful, as it doesn't allow people to hide behind the argument "But the model says...." (a typical regulatory and industry tactic, as the book I mentioned previously outlines; check out what happened with North Atlantic Cod to see why precise predictions aren't always as useful as general ones).

 

[lomiller]

This is not about whether the Earth's average temps. are increasing or if humans are responsible for it. I assume both are facts.

My question is regarding predictions of how this will effect the planet.

There are lots of distinct climates around the world, along with a lot more sub-climates within each climatic zone.

Let alone the planet-wide warm water currents, the jet stream, El Ninos and La Ninas, Sahara events, Arctic events, etc etc.

Given ALL of the climate zones and ALL of these other variables, is it scientific and indeed legitimate for climate scientists to even attempt to predict how Global Warming will effect individual nations and cities...let alone the entire planet?

I know we are smart..but I don't think we iz that smart.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression working out the global effects of global warming is more difficult then working out the regional effect. If fact the reverse is true by a wide margin.

While the exact implications for specific regions may have a great deal of uncertainty, we are facing a rate of warming as great or greater then what occurs when the earth exits a glaciation. Even if we slow down CO2 emissions now we are looking at 2-3 deg C of warming over ~100 years. At the peak of warming during the end of the last glaciation the earth warmed ~6 deg C over several hundred years.

We know the changes in local climate for almost all regions were huge and we have no reason to think the impact of current warming will be any less. This remains true even if it’s difficult to predict exactly what changes will occure.

 

[Thunder]

We know the changes in local climate for almost all regions were huge and we have no reason to think the impact of current warming will be any less. This remains true even if it’s difficult to predict exactly what changes will occure.

yes, but we do not know how natural global warming, the forces that causedit, and all the natural proceses that came with it.....will effect the Earth differently than man-made Global Warming and the LACK of natural factors that led to it.

I'm not saying its a complete crap shoot, but I do think maybe we should rely more on the conservative estimates of change....rather than the more radical ones....due to these many unknown factors, effects, causes, etc etc.

 

[lomiller]

well I mean for example, did anyone predict that AGW might cause the Arctic to get warmer, thereby sending its "cold" air deeper south into North America, giving us such a cold winter?

I never read or heard such a prediction. It just appears to me that the number of possibilities are too great, and variables too many, to really say with any certainty what WILL happen....let alone what is likely to occur.

While it may have been cold by the standards of the last decade, last winter was warm by the standards of the last century. There will be regional increases and decreases in snowfall, but predicting what regions and when can be difficult. Eventually, some places where snow is now common, will only see it rarely, but in the meantime increased moisture in the air that results from higher temperatures can increase snowfall.

 

[macdoc]

At this point ground zero WILL flood - there is no question beyond actively removing c02 on an enormous scale.

The question is when.

Insurance companies are good at assessing risk and already incorporate the increased risk age poses in their premiums for regions.

As tp cooler winters in the continents - the Arctic Dipole is NOT a new phenomena.

The Anthropocene is and will continue to be marked by wider swings in extremes compared to the benign Holocene.

There is vastly more energy in the geosystems thanks to agw and it will out - sometimes as slow but pernicious as melting permafrost....in others changes in intensity of cyclical patterns ( El Nino ) and shifts in intensity of events like the annual monsoon ( Pakistan ) or shifts in rain and timing of rain ( Australia, the Sahel, Southern China.

It is an ongoing effort to bring some risk assessment down to the local level as has been done successfully with th Atlantic Hurricane season.

It IS massively complex, there is no sense in ignoring what will be increasingly evident.

Southern Spain for instance cannot ignore ongoing desertification as climate regimes migrate north. Already areas are devastated beyond recall...Italy cannot ignore events around the River Po as meltwater fails to drive generators.

The Dutch spend billions preparing even tho timing is uncertain.

There are known massive forces at work shifting climate bands. There will be local consequences not to be ignored.

As one governor in the midwest observed ....

One 100 year flood, okay I can accept that.....THREE 100 year floods in 12 years.....something else is going on....

Indeed...and as a governor of a state at risk of more frequent extremes - he cannot afford to sit on his hands and wait.
He must prepare - even tho timing is uncertain.

Should California "downplay" - the "big one" and it's consequences?

Should New York ignore the rising trillion dollar risk of a Cat 4 landing.

They should not and they do not.

It is only sound management to prepare.

No more evident than with Katrina where the problems were outlined starkly in a planned scenario which occurred a year before the event.....and whose concluding report of anticipated failure points was ignored.

Science 9 September 2005:
Vol. 309 no. 5741 pp. 1656-1659
DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5741.1656

• News of the Week

HURRICANE KATRINAHURRICANE KATRINAScientists' Fears Come True as Hurricane Floods New Orleans

1. John Travis*

+ Author Affiliations

1. With reporting by Carolyn Gramling, Jocelyn Kaiser, Eli Kintisch, and Erik Stokstad.

There are times when scientists would prefer to be wrong. Such was the case last week as Ivor van Heerden and other researchers reflected upon the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast towns to the east. As director of Louisiana State University's Center for Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes, Van Heerden has since 2002 led a multidisciplinary team looking at what would happen if a major hurricane directly hit New Orleans. The center has studied everything from how the city would flood to how many people might ignore evacuation orders or be unable to flee—almost 1 in 4, they had estimated. “The sad part is that we called this 100%,” says Van Heerden.

more

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1656.full?etoc

 

[macdoc]

'm not saying its a complete crap shoot, but I do think maybe we should rely more on the conservative estimates of change.

The IPCC estimates ARE conservative by nature and have been shown to be so each time a new report comes out.....especially in regards to change in the Arctic.

one of many such reports showing IPCC too conservative...

Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis.
This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science.
Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.
The findings were presented at a major science conference in Vienna.
The research group is not the first to suggest that the IPCC's forecast of an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43cm by 2100 is too conservative.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7349236.stm

Now should Netherlands follow the the "too conservative" play line to protect their low lying nation?

 

[CapelDodger]

well I mean for example, did anyone predict that AGW might cause the Arctic to get warmer ...

Polar amplification was certainly predicted.

... thereby sending its "cold" air deeper south into North America, giving us such a cold winter.

I never read or heard such a prediction.

In "us" you presumably don't include Greenlanders? And apart from December we've had it quite warm here in the UK.

This was suggested as a possibility before the event. The meteorology behind it is straightforward enough, and "blocking highs" have occurred in the past. They may not occur every NH winter (two in a row is not much to go on), only time will tell.

It just appears to me that the number of possibilities are too great, and variables too many, to really say with any certainty what WILL happen....let alone what is likely to occur.

That would depend on how much certainty you demand. Expasion of Hadley cells is certain, and is happening : this has the effect of shifting the dry band of descending air away from the equator (from, for instance, Northern Mexico to the Southern US).

Climate bands generally move away from the equator (the Roaring 40's become the Roaring 50's in time, and so on). The effects of that are easily predicted, within the general uncertainty of weather.

 

[Trakar]

This is not about whether the Earth's average temps. are increasing or if humans are responsible for it. I assume both are facts.

My question is regarding predictions of how this will effect the planet.

There are lots of distinct climates around the world, along with a lot more sub-climates within each climatic zone.

Let alone the planet-wide warm water currents, the jet stream, El Ninos and La Ninas, Sahara events, Arctic events, etc etc.

Given ALL of the climate zones and ALL of these other variables, is it scientific and indeed legitimate for climate scientists to even attempt to predict how Global Warming will effect individual nations and cities...let alone the entire planet?

I know we are smart..but I don't think we iz that smart.

It is much easier to accurately project the large scale and general, than it is the detailed and specific. The most simple analogy might involve a look at the gas laws such as Boyle's. It would be nearly impossible for us to accurately accurately plot and predict the multiple interactions between gas molecules and the surfaces of any containers they might reside in over any period of time. However, through the application of these gas laws, we don't need to be able to account for each molecule and its interactions in order to derive, for instance, the pressure that a certain precise measure of gas molecules will generate upon the walls of a container at given temperatures. With climate we can say many broad general things with very high levels of confidence, but when we try to derive daily weather at any given spot and time from our general climate understandings our certainty is of a much lower order.

 

[Trakar]

well I mean for example, did anyone predict that AGW might cause the Arctic to get warmer, thereby sending its "cold" air deeper south into North America, giving us such a cold winter?

I never read or heard such a prediction. It just appears to me that the number of possibilities are too great, and variables too many, to really say with any certainty what WILL happen....let alone what is likely to occur.

Arrhenius among others, predicted the magnified arctic warming as a direct consequence of AGW more than a century ago. The shifting pressure cells that control the movement of northern air masses are a consequence of a warming arctic in transition, but precisely how such play out as conditions change isn't always as clear.

 

[CapelDodger]

yes, but we do not know how natural global warming, the forces that causedit, and all the natural proceses that came with it.....will effect the Earth differently than man-made Global Warming and the LACK of natural factors that led to it.

AGW isn't going to change the climate any differently from other causes of greenhouse warming.

I'm not saying its a complete crap shoot, but I do think maybe we should rely more on the conservative estimates of change....rather than the more radical ones....due to these many unknown factors, effects, causes, etc etc.

Which is what you'll find in the IPCC reports - conservative estimates.

What experience has showng is that the impacts of AGW are happening more quickly than expected by (typically conservative) scientists. Arctic sea-ice is being lost more quickly, permafrost is melting more quickly, glaciers and ice-caps are retreating more quickly, Australian property insurance rates are rising more quickly. (The last is an extrapolation, but a valid one, I think.)

Conservative estimates have turned out to be at the low end of likelihood (as one would expect). The reason the IPCC has been castigated so often for "alarmism" and exaggeration of the potential problem (you'll have come across a lot of that, I'm sure, unless you live in a cave ) is that even conservative estimates are not easily ignored.

 

[Trakar]

ok, I can accept making predictions. But I think given all the many climates & sub-climates, and all the other variables that effect temperature, humdity, air pressure, etc etc, perhaps we should limit our acceptance of AGW predictions to the less "scary" ones, and focus more on the more conservative and more widely accepted predictions of climatic change.

i.e...no more talk about Ground Zero being flooded.

Conservatism in Science is based upon the science, not what you or I may consider "scary."

Best available conservative climate science indicates that we should probably expect somewhere around 2m of sea level rise and 4-6 degrees C average temp rise by very early in the next century, and that is just the start, not as bad as it will get,...and this is if we get a grip on our emissions and begin cutting them much sooner and more drastically than I think will happen.

 

[Trakar]

yes, but we do not know how natural global warming, the forces that causedit, and all the natural proceses that came with it.....will effect the Earth differently than man-made Global Warming and the LACK of natural factors that led to it.

I'm not saying its a complete crap shoot, but I do think maybe we should rely more on the conservative estimates of change....rather than the more radical ones....due to these many unknown factors, effects, causes, etc etc.

Actually, we do. We have rather extensive records and studies of historic and paleo climate conditions and understandings of what occurred, why, and how fast. With AGW, we are rather trying to understand an experiment in progress, but it is understanding of historic and paleo climate that we use to guide us in understandings and expectations. The only real problem, is that nature tends to change levels much more slowly and in more clearly step-wise fashion as plateaus of equilibrium are achieved and gradually exceeded. Human forcings are much more rapid and overwhelming in their occurence and impacts, so out best estimates (based upon similar paleoclimate events)tend to be overly conservative in terms of time and impact, at least so far, but we are getting better.

 

[Trakar]

Though this paper is extremely conservative in its assessment of impacts, if you look at the CO2 ratios it projects and then correlate these to what have become more generally accepted impacts of those levels over the last handful of years, it isn't a pretty picture.

Uncertainties in Climate Stabilization
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate change/Data sources/WigleyClimChange gas mixes.pdf

Abstract The atmospheric composition, temperature and sea level implications
out to 2300 of new reference and cost-optimized stabilization emissions scenarios
produced using three different Integrated Assessment (IA) models are described
and assessed. Stabilization is defined in terms of radiative forcing targets for the
sum of gases potentially controlled under the Kyoto Protocol. For the most stringent
stabilization case (“Level 1” with CO2 concentration stabilizing at about 450 ppm),
peak CO2 emissions occur close to today, implying (in the absence of a substantial
CO2 concentration overshoot) a need for immediate CO2 emissions abatement if we
wish to stabilize at this level. In the extended reference case, CO2 stabilizes at about
1,000 ppm in 2200—but even to achieve this target requires large and rapid CO2
emissions reductions over the twenty-second century. Future temperature changes
for the Level 1 stabilization case differ noticeably between the IA models even when
a common set of climate model parameters is used (largely a result of different
assumptions for non-Kyoto gases). For the Level 1 stabilization case, there is a
probability of approximately 50% that warming from pre-industrial times will be less than (or more than) 2◦C. For one of the IA models, warming in the Level 1
case is actually greater out to 2040 than in the reference case due to the effect of
decreasing SO2 emissions that occur as a side effect of the policy-driven reduction
in CO2 emissions. This effect is less noticeable for the other stabilization cases, but
still leads to policies having virtually no effect on global-mean temperatures out to
around 2060. Sea level rise uncertainties are very large. For example, for the Level 1
stabilization case, increases range from 8 to 120 cm for changes over 2000 to 2300.

 

[Trakar]

With the recent discussion of sensitivity issues looking at them in a little more detail is probably a good idea.

Observational Constraints on Climate Sensitivity
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/knutti/papers/allen06exeter.pdf

Climate sensitivity, or the equilibrium warming resulting from a doubling of carbon dioxide levels, cannot be measured directly, since the real climate system will never be subjected to a carbon dioxide doubling and then allowed to come into equilibrium. Because we can neither observe sensitivity directly nor find observable quantities that are directly proportional to it over the full range of values that are consistent with current observations, any estimate of the probability that a given greenhouse gas stabilisation level might result in a 'dangerous' equilibrium warming turns out to be dependent on subjective prior assumptions of the investigators and not purely on constraints provided by actual climate observations. In contrast, we can observe the strength of atmospheric feedbacks, or the change in top-of-atmosphere energy flux in response to a surface temperature change, much more directly than climate sensitivity itself. The net strength of these feedbacks is directly related to the inverse of the climate sensitivity, or the range of stabilisation concentrations consistent with a target temperature rise. Hence, policies that focus on a maximum temperature rise, accepting uncertainty in the stabilisation concentration that may be required to achieve it, are better informed by climate observations than policies that focus on a target stabilisation concentration, accepting uncertainty in the resulting long-term equilibrium warming.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=275109

New calculations applied to a U.S. Senate report reveal the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to combat global warming through regulation of greenhouse gases would theoretically take over $700 trillion, seven times the world's gross production, to drop the earth's temperature only 1 degree Celsius.

Good luck selling that fix.

 

[Reality Check]

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=275109

Good luck selling that fix.

The Senate report says the EPA predicts $78 billion in annual costs. Over 100 years that is $7.8 trillion.
The blog compares that to the world's annual gross production which is really dumb.

The US 2010 GDP was 14,624,184 million, i.e. 14,624 billion. So the EPA are predicting a cost of 0.6% of the US GDP.

Really easy to sell that fix.

 

[Ambrosia]

Really easy to sell that fix.

You'd think so. Sadly with the state of the moronic bloggers who keep putting out staggeringly ridiculous comparisons, and the average attention span of a lot of joe public who read the headlines and treat them as gospel, I suspect selling any kind of fix to regulate CO2 is going to be hard going.

The science is done, the overwhelming weight of evidence says yes we are screwing the planet via CO2, every month that ticks past gives the scientists even more weight to the arguments, and still people are in the arguing about stuff phase and not the doing things phase

I am starting to think that even after we get to a summer Ice free Arctic there will still be people spouting Monkton claptrap, and holding up the doing phase...