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."

Comments

It's because....

[gardyloo]

This thing was run on so many PCs. They obviously took the simulation itself into account -- good job!

Re:It's because....

[ajs]

Nope, I recall measurements in Australia showing the same thing, and Antartica has been in a warming trend for the last 10,000 years (since the last ice age). You are correct, though that, as we understand it, the North Atlantic and Mediteranian suffered a far stronger period of warming 500-100 years ago (Egypt, as I recall, was significantly impacted).

The grand (or is that grand, grand) parent was concerned that the Bush administration didn't realize that the EPA was saying that the temperatures were rising AND were predicting further rises.

The problem here is a misunderstanding of what the point of disagreement is (and it's really not a right-left issue at all: I'm a liberal democrat myself, but agree with the White House on this). The difference is based, not on the question, "is it getting warmer?" That was a real and significant question in the 80s when there were doubts about the measurements being used. However, at this point we are fairly certain that temperatures have been rising for the last 100 years and have been rising more sharply for the last 50.

The question is: is this a natural warming trend, as observed 500-1000 years ago, is this human-induced or is it a combination of the two.

The most likely answer is that it's a combination, so the disagreement boils down to where you place the division of responsibility. If man is responsible for 0.00001% of the current warming trend then there's no point in worrying about it any more than we worry about tracking hurricanes. Do the math, warn the people, carry on.

If we're responsible for 50% of the current warming trend, then we should seriously re-think out interaction with the environment... and soon!

My personal belief is that, in the current climate of mud-slinging and political pressure, there is no reasonable way to determine the real answer, and so I am left with one overriding fact: for every form of influence man can exert on our world, nature routinely exerts far, far more influence. All of our factories, planes and cars pale in comparison to volcanoes, forest fires and various bilogical processes. The Sun's influence is still poorly understood. For example, what is the exact relationship between increases in solar output and evaporation? Since water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas, knowing if evaporation is a linear, logarithmic or step function with respect to solar radiation is KEY to understanding global warming, and yet the process of evaporation is so complex that we have yet to understand it even enough to describe simple weather phenomenon, much less climactic change.

So, do we change the way we live? We should, but we didn't need a global warming debate to tell us that. We desperately need to police the most obviously damaging influences that man has on the environment. Chemical dumping kills millions every year, around the world. Why is that less of a problem than the THEORY that global warming might have a human influence?! We're over-fishing our oceans. Why is that less of a danger to human quality of life? We've been preventing forest fires the wrong way for 100 years, leading to fires that burn orders of magnitude hotter and more dangerously.

The problem I have with environmentalism is that it is mostly focused on a FEELING that humans are doing the wrong thing, and research is used as a sort of background music to the movement rather than the driving force. I want to be an environmentalist, but as long as environmentalism is defined by owl-squeezers and doom predictors I guess I'll have to just be a concerned inhabitant of planet Earth.

Re:...not good news for the planet...

[savagedome]

Planet will be fine. This is just the planet's way to get rid of us. We were here to create plastic and that need is over.

In the words of George Carlin:

If plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, 'Why are we here?' Plastic...asshole.

Help climateprediction.net!

[miope]

The climates models are computed using the BOINC platform (distributed computing in your PC, similar to SETI, etc.).

Please, help the project donating your idle CPU cycles, go to: the homesite of the project and download the client.

The client (BOINC) supports Linux, Windows, MAC OS, etc.

Re:You have to prioritize

[Wyatt Earp]

"Keep your military in your own damn country; no-one likes a nosy neighbour."

OK. So when the EU can take care of, say, problems a days drive from Berlin, like Kosovo or Bosnia, the United States should leave Europe, of course when the entire Red Army and Warsaw Pact was sitting on the other side of the Fulda Gap, it was alright to be nosy.

What about Korea? Ready for the DPRK to burn Seoul? Or Japan? Ready for the PRC to get back at Japan for WW2? Or Taiwan? Ready for the PRC to get back at them for having the gaul to resist the PRC?

Or how about things no one hears about, like the Green Berets demining all over the world? Or American SAR saving lives in the deep ocean? Or how about the 82nd Airborne keeping the DMZ in the Sinai since 1977?

Or what about the US military being there to assist in the Indian Ocean after the Tsuamni? Australia is the only other one in the region with any sealift or airlift and it's a fraction of what the US has.

As soon as the rest of the World shows the slightest ability to not burn itself down the moment we pull back to the US, we'll be happy to, until you all man up, you are stuck with us.

Re:First test of this distributed model

[chickanmonkey]

From climateprediction.net Introduction to climate modelling

The equations are tweaked, within reasonable boundaries, so that the model does as well as possible at producing past and current climates (compared to archived observations).

I really can't beleave you give them so little credit as to think they would overlook something so bleading obvious as to test the model before using it. Do you discount everyone you disagree with this easily.

Re:You have to prioritize

[thej1nx]

You don't really get it do you ?

Afghanistan was fine. Noticed how the world was with you and cheering you on when you went there ? But let us cut the crap. You didn't really go there to "extend freedom and democrocy". You went there to catch terrorists who had attacked you and to topple a regime which harboured these terrorists, and world agreed that you had the right. Freedom and democracy ? Well that was incidental. You *are* supposed to clean up after the mess you cause. If you create a power vaccum you would definitely be expected to protect the innocent civilians there from anarchial looting and rioting, by helping set up a democratic government.

As for Iraq ... for the umpteenth time, how was it a problem for you ? There are hundreds of tyrannical regime. Last I checked one of them actually became an ally despite having WMDs and caught profilerating the nuke technology *and* being a dictatorial regime, which had actually toppled the previous democratic government via a military coup.

You seem to be the only one buying into your fairytales about "extending freedom and democracy", when in reality you just support dictators usually.

Re:You have to prioritize

[metamatic]

Is he worth hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? Because that's how many his men have killed since he was in power.

And guess what? We killed ten of thousands ourselves "liberating" them, and now the civilian death rate is worse than it was under Saddam.

And they didn't just die from bombings, we're talking rape and torture. And no, not the kind of torture where people have sex in front of you and make you undress, but the kind where things are shoved up your ass that don't belong in your ass, where you are slowly killed, you know, real torture.

You mean like the Iraqi teenager who was seen in Abu Ghraib, lying on the floor with his anus bleeding while US troops discussed sodomizing him with metal objects? I guess that story didn't get reported on FOX News, huh?