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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...
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.
"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?
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?
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.
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
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