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New Climate Change Warning
sebFlyte writes "A new grid computing climate research project, climateprediction.net, has come up with its first major results, and they're really not good news for the planet according to the BBC. The simulations suggest that over the next hundred years we could see average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K, more than twice what was previously thought."
Here's a graphic that shows the cause of all this, in a particularly vivid way.
Almost fell off my chair when I first saw this info...
Anyone else read Michael Crichton's latest novel State of Fear?
He has an interesting take on the subject, backed with documentation to his sources.
I for one, can't imagine a center to study the climate coming up with any conclusion other than there's trouble ahead. If they said all is well they would be out of business. So what if the record high temperature for today is from 1950 and the record low is from 1970. This would indicate that the planet might be getting cooler? Okay, science is a business you know. What scientist is going to put himself out of business by saying everythings safe. We're okay. Don't worry. Give me money to tell you your okay and safe. Never happen. Give me money because we need to calculate how hot the earth will be 15 years from now. I can do it in four years, and by the way, I need a huge computer system to study this, along with about 10 college students, pretty ones will do. I'll need plane tickets to travel around and lecture about my findings. Ho HUMMMMMM
The people who go into environmental sciences, like the people who go into journalism, are a self-selected group who have generally progressive ideas. Not so much with non-environmental Physics or Chemistry.
This leads to an abundance of progressive thinkers in these fields which gives them the general left-leaning slant. It's nothing like a conspiracy, just the general direction that these things take. You'll find left-leaning lawyers making up the bulk of environmental law, you'll find right-leaning lawyers making up the bulk of DAs. It's just the way things work out. People are drawn to areas they have an interest in.
So we can see how the environmental sciences would be filled with people who were actually out looking for problems and thinking up solutions. So you end up where we are now where the prevailing scientific opinion (among environmental scientists) is that doom and gloom await us if we do not change our living patterns NOW.
Well, those scientists have their own political agenda from which they take pre-fabricated solutions and apply them to the scientific problems which they've 'discovered'.
A technologist would look at global warming and see an opportunity to create something to help mankind cross that bridge. The environmental scientist can only consider cutting back current levels of technology to prevent the inevitable from happening.
On a tech site, you'd think you'd find more of the technologist perspective, but instead you find the latter Chicken Little perspective. The solution to global warming is technology, not the repealing of technology.
Yes, and "shock and awe" wars are the best way of letting the rest of the world know that America won't let it's superpower status diminish the respect it gives to other nations.
Oh, and repeatedly saying that Iraq caused 9/11, doesn't make it true; it only makes stupid people think it is. (Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy comic) They didn't have WMD's, they didn't have facilities to manufacture large amounts of WMD's. They had oil, and GWB had a family grudge. Keep your military in your own damn country; no-one likes a nosy neighbour.
Yeah, yeah. (-1, Flamebait). Bring it.
"Stephen Byers claims to know that 400 ppm is the maximum 'safe' level; what we show is that it may be impossible to pin down a safe level, and therefore we should not focus exclusively on stabilisation."
Ok, so its impossible to pin down a "safe level" of greenhouse gas, so we already might be over the "safe level" or it might not be "safe" if there are only 200ppm, so what we need to do is build this huge CO2 sink that will draw down CO2 to nearly 0ppm, that will be safe right? It has to be!
This is the same logic that causes Superfund in the US to clean up toxins to lower than naturally occuring levels wasting billions of dollars digging tons of dirt and replacing it with new dirt just because arsenic is found in higher than 3ppb naturally in some area.
We don't know what's safe, but we know that at some level it becomes bad, so that means at any level it's bad right?
Iraq was a HUGE mistake, worse than that, carefully planned mistake. Yeah yeah, think of the troops, we dont want to demoralize them! I doubt the troops want to live in a fairyland, they deserve the truth.
I honestly do not understand how anyone can doubt that humans cause climate change. First of all, it is a fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Nobody can dispute this: you can prove it with a very simple experiment, and of course the planet Venus is a very vivid example. Therefore, all other things being equal, increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the planet to heat up. It seems obvious that it's better to err on the side of caution than to say the future is too difficult to predict, and therefore we shouldn't do anything.
Reducing our emissions can only help, and can indeed go a long way, but over the last 50 years its become painfully clear how impossibly difficult it is for such drastic measures to take place. It's unpopular among corporations, politicians and the general population. Not a good way to get things done. Now - if alternative power sources become more profitable and cheaper than fossil fuels, the world will jump on the bandwagon and reduce emissions in an instant.
But should we really hope that an unsure economic turnaround takes place in the next 100 years, before average global temperature rises 11K? And even then, can zero emissions stop anything? As per my previous comment in this story, a pot of boiling water will continue to boil even if its removed from the stove. There IS an alternative solution, though. It involves increasing the earth's albedo - the reflectiveness of the atmosphere and surface. Now, the earth already has a mechanism to do this: storms. Clouds have a high reflectiveness, and storms also kick up the ocean, producing whitecaps. If the temperature rises, storm activity might simply increase, in which case we might just be OK. But just as an additional safeguard (after all, we're talking about the whole planet/life/7 billion people) we might just want to come up with our own method of raising the albedo.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I heard an interview with Jared Diamond yesterday.
He was talking about Easter Island where the people destroyed their own environment and everyone died as a result.
The host was like "but didn't they realize chopping down all the trees on the island would result in everyone's death?"
And he was like "We're doing the same thing right now except with the entire planet and you don't see anyone complaining about it do you? If it can make some people rich now then it doesn't matter how many people it will kill later. That's basically human logic."
Basically humans are just really stupid and we'll eventually kill ourselves off. Consider how long some plants, fish and bugs have been here...this little human experiment is nothing in the grand scheme...well except the planet will be radioactive and toxic afterwards...but some kind of mold or insect will no doubt continue to live long after us.
if there is more than one average rise in temperature from the globe, it denotes a change of temperature in a single location (i.e. from a single sensing station).
Had the article said "for the next hundred years", I'd have questioned its science rather than its grammar. Yes, it is confusing, but 11 Degress Celsius (as it is properly referred to) is still an outrageous increase, especially taking into account the fact that it is an average temperature. This means that the both the mean and extremes increase. Expect some very cold weather in parts due to "global warming". Also, expect scorchers. Of course, the significance is not so much the extremes as it is this mean temperature. Bird migration and plant budding schedules are already off-kilter. This isn't only an inconvenience for Dodo birds, its a serious hazard to the Earth's convenient biological balance. Watch for increased pollution in cities, species die-offs, catastrophic farming years, fisheries collapse, and increased natural disasters. It's in front of us right now. Those places least harmed by the full force of the tsunami had wave-breaking coral reefs and mangrove swamps in front of them. Without these, and many more, of nature's natural defenses, we're in major trouble.
It's not just "The Day After Tomorrow", people.
C02 is not the major contributor to global warming, either now (yes, we have quite a bit of us as it is, which is why it ain't -40C outside), nor under the projections. Rather, it is water vapor that is the real greenhouse gas. The problem with the simulations is positive feedback, and anyone who has ever dealt with such a phenomena knows how chaotic it can be. The simulations that predict these really high numbers essentially get caught in a loop - more C02 = slight rise in temp = more water vapor and C02 = more rise in temp = more water vapor and C02, etc However, we have been hotter than this before. If positive feedback was really that easy, we would have already triggered it and wouldn't be where we are now.
Actually, temperature extremes are part of global warming. Therefore, in Canada we can expect it to get even colder in the winter as well as hotter in the summer. And don't forget all the awful stuff like violent thunder storms, tornados, droughts, ice storms and blizzards that will happen with increasing frequency.
Here is a good resource on global warming from EPA and National Science Foundation though there estimates are little lower, 6 celsius is there upper end over the next century. The most impressive thing about this web site is that its created by people in the U.S. government, the Bush White House hasn't shut it down and they haven't fired the people who created it, so shhhhh don't tell them about it because they must know its there because they really hate anyone who says stuff like this.
One of the more interesting sections. Those of you who've been through the big rains on the West Coast and the big snows on the East Coast should note that intense rainstorms and presumably snow storms are a potential indicator of global warming as the oceans evaporate off more water as they warm.
"Global mean surface temperatures have increased 0.5-1.0F since the late 19th century. The 20th century's 10 warmest years all occurred in the last 15 years of the century. Of these, 1998 was the warmest year on record. The snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean have decreased. Globally, sea level has risen 4-8 inches over the past century. Worldwide precipitation over land has increased by about one percent. The frequency of extreme rainfall events has increased throughout much of the United States."
"Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to accelerate the rate of climate change. Scientists expect that the average global surface temperature could rise 1-4.5F (0.6-2.5C) in the next fifty years, and 2.2-10F (1.4-5.8C) in the next century, with significant regional variation. Evaporation will increase as the climate warms, which will increase average global precipitation. Soil moisture is likely to decline in many regions, and intense rainstorms are likely to become more frequent. Sea level is likely to rise two feet along most of the U.S. coast."
@de_machina
bin Laden does have a stated intent to kill Americans yes. The fundamental goal they are striving for, however, is the for muslim states of the middle east to become Islamic states. As to killing Americans... yes, he will try, and is limited only by his capability. I am not questioning intent, I am questioning capability.
Aum Shinrikyo was a japanese cult that had billions at their disposal, and were interested in making chemical and nuclear weapons. With all that money, and recruiting intelligent young grad students from major Japanese universities they managed a single sarin gas attack in 1995 killing 12 people.
al Qaeda has used coventional explosives in all their attacks, and have, aside from 9/11, failed to show anything resembling global reach. In fact there is much evidence that al Qaeda is more of a venture capital firm for anyone wanting to attack Americans, and don't have any extant network at all - and never did.
Which raises the point that really the issue is constraining capability, and capability mostly takes the form of money. In theory the US has a vast and powerful foreign intelligence agency (NSA) that is supposed to be good at tracing and shutting down money flowing into terrorist causes. That, it would seem to me, would be the most effective way to fight the war on terror: quietly and efficiently in the background, not drawing attention and inspiring other random terrorist groups to act in sympathy. I'm sure that's probably happening. All the rest - the tromping around of military, the random security measures applied piecemeal to random points of infrastructure in the US, the arrests of terrorist cells (usually innocent) - that's all for show. To be honest, it's probably more counterproductive than anything.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
A complicating factor is that 1850 marked the end of a several century global cooling event. The years 800 to 1200 AD were considerably warmer than from AD 1400 to 1800.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Peak Oil will is coming to a theatre near you. People who don't know about it better learn soon, the peak will probably come in 2007 sometime from what it looks like, but surely before the end of the decade. Buckle your seat belts people. For more information on Peak Oil and a concise list of the resources out there check my research website http://ospmm.sourceforge.net/research.html
Technically, to stop terrorism we just have to shoot all the people. (/straight face)
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
"There is evidence that in ages past, the earth was MUCH warmer"
Correct, but the reason we find fossils in siberia, and antartica for that matter, is because they have moved farther from the equator since then. Not because the world was warmer then.
The reason that areas now under water were dry then have alot to do with rising and lowering tectonic plates, similar to how we can find marine fossils on the tops of mountains. This also has little to do with past ocean levels.
If 200 feet of ocean evaporated, the increase in the amount of gas in the atmosphere would cause 'air' pressure to quadruple. I put air in quotes because at that point the 'air' would bo 80% water vapor. And about 4% oxygen. The oxygen levels alone would kill most animal life.
Violent weather is not caused by simple temprature gradients. It is caused when moist air rises. This causes the air to lose pressure, and this causes a loss in temprature. As you said temprature greatly affects how much water the air can hold. So the the extra water in the moist air condenses out. This releases a lot of heat, and keeps the air rising a lot longer than it would if it were dry. The violence comes because more air gets sucked in to replace the rising air. A hurricane is caused when this happens over warm water. The fresh air picks up a lot of water vapor from the warm water and keeps the whole thing going.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
A while ago I was inspired to create this blog, and ever since it seems to be writing itself. I have set up Super Scary Climate Blog. I've got an Instiki Wiki started there for the purpose of tracking climate variability. Please feel invited to contribute.
This study is interesting as it posits that in fact the rise of CO2 levels really began 8000 years ago when people began clearing large tracts of land for farming.
That accounts for half of the CO2 changes from the norm; the last 150 years accounts for the other half.
He also notes that from climate models it seems the rise in CO2 has served to shield us from a large scale glaciation phase that was scheduled to hit long before now, and kept the climate more stable!
The study is rather interesting (full link to study in article, check end) as he really ties together a wide variety of data from different sources.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except the dead ones, natch.
Saddam should have been removed long before now
You just don't get it, do you. The gassings of the kurds and iranians was over 10 years ago, when Saddam was the US's "friend" vs Iran. Dissing him for being "stupid-ass" is a little comical in light of your own leader's academic ability; "power hungry" is laughable in the face of an America hell-bent on bombing anyone who is against the "american way". The question isn't about Iraq. All the reasons that have been given for the war with Iraq are just distractions. Dictator? Lots of those about. Human rights? Oooh. the US executes minors doesn't it? Tortures prisoners, holds people in no-mans-land without recourse to legal representation. Does Saudi Arabia have a wonderful record on Human rights or democracy?
Saddam was no worse than a whole list of other world leaders. He had fewer links to Al Quaida than almost any other middle eastern state (especially those "best buddy" Saudis). The country was fairly peaceful - a little repressive, some disappearances, but nothing over-the-top in comparison to other middle eastern states, or even your own (Hmmm, does the name Maher Arar ring any bells?).
We in Europe "turn our backs" on the US's use of capital punishment, indefinite internment of people without trial, electoral anomalies (Gerrymandering is pretty much a way of life in the US), free trade restrictions (Steel tariffs, for example), unilateral invasions of sovereign states and many other "misdemeanours". We share a world, and each have our own ways of running our countries. You can't just decide that someone made your daddy look silly and therefore you have to kill tens of thousands of people to remove him from power.
War in Iraq wasn't even close to being a last resort unless you decide that Saddam being in power was the underlying "problem".
Here is a Washington Post piece on the Bush administration's efforts to suppress this kind of report, at the EPA no less, though I wager unless its coming from Fox news you will probably consider it left wing propaganda since I imagine you are a card carrying member of the American Gestapo(a.k.a the New Repulican Party). You probably shouldn't refer to yourself as incompetent, its not a sign of the strength you need in your line of work :)
@de_machina