Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds

Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."

Comments

Re:OOOK

[QuantumG]

It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.

Nothing New

[DesScorp]

It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.

And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.

Re:Nothing New

[QuantumG]

In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world's first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[...]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan's third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.

And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city -- for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.

All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.

So when I say Limits To Growth is "bullshit" I'm clearly being inaccurate, I should have said "horse shit" :)

Re:Nothing New

[BrainInAJar]

Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan

Woah there... as a philosophy geek that's done entire courses on Leviathan alone, I can say definitively that you are way out of left field with that one. Hobbes predicted nothing of the sort no matter how you interpret it. The "nasty, brutish, and short" comment was about man devoid of any form of governance such as the literary scenario he laid out for the condition of man in the past.

A horrible misrepresentation of a text like that'll garner you a C- at best by anyone who has actually read the book

Re:Nothing New

[im_thatoneguy]

And just how did they get out of this horseshit disaster?

By recognizing the problem and finding a solution. Street cars, subways and eventually motor vehicles.

You can recognize the foresight of the New York administration of the late 19th century for recognizing that their current path was not a sustainable one and began planning and investing in solutions to the problem.

But no. I'm sure you're right. If we just completely avoid the problem then the inevitability of progress will happen without any research. Without any change and without any effort.

Meanwhile billions go hungry. Tens of thousands die every day from malnutrition. But no I'm sure you're right there was no food crisis. That's why the UN didn't just have a FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT this summer.

Don't get me wrong. When it comes to technology I'm the most hopeless idealistic optimist there is but I also recognize there is a cost. That right now we are wrecklessly spending resources at an astronomically disproportionate rate to our rate of innovation and that we're like kids in a candy store unsupervised.

We're really living in a bubble of inexpensive and practically free energy. Energy is dirt cheap right now. Commodity materials are dirt cheap. If we don't critically reevaluate our energy sources and our resource recycling very soon the bubble will pop.

We have a limited window of nearly free energy and inexpensive commodity materials to build the infrastructure to ensure we don't see an end to cheap energy and inexpensive materials. If we can build renewable power sources *now* then we can continue to use our fossil fuels for fertilizer and plastic. If we wait until energy prices double, triple, quadruple and on and on then your plastic electronics are going to see the plastic quadruple in cost. If we wait until the energy prices double, triple and quadruple the cost of processing the aluminum in the windmill is going to quadruple.

Avert the energy bubble crashing by saving the 'free food' for when they're needed.

We are already starting to see population constriction. LA is importing almost all of its water. Where do you get more fresh water? Desalination? That's great when energy is practically free, but if fresh water starts costing energy and energy is from limited poorly scaleable sources such as coal then you're going to see the cost of water rise with energy.

Everything is getting tied into our energy supply. Our food. Our water. This is all fine as long as energy stays cheap. Fossil fuels are a limited supply and are requiring more and more energy to extract. We can only expect their prices to rise and rise and rise.

You can say that "technology found a way to solve the environmental problems of the 19th century." and you would be right. They were to STOP POLLUTING. We could be saving a lot of money if we just dumped and polluted like the 19th century. But instead of just throwing up our hands and saying "Oh! Hey! Technology will save us." They actually bought the technology that would save us and accepted the price tag. It's not free.

We can keep continue tapping our free energy credit line but we need to realize it is a bubble. It will increase in price. Our lives are becoming intimately tied to its cost and the best time to start planning for the future is yesterday. These technological advances don't happen when we aren't researching them. We can't just invest trillions of dollars in oil drilling and expect efficient solar panels to spontaneously emerge. It takes interst and investment.

Will we look back on this time and laugh? I hope so. But we'll laugh because we reacted to a threat and fixed it. Our costly and difficult choice will be seen as trivial and obvious. Just as was digging a giant tunnel into manhattan to feed it with water. Just as was building a subway system.

Let's look at the story of Horse shit and highlight the key point. The solution to the horse shit problem... wasn't more horses. We've got a horse shit problem and buying more horses isn't the technological whiz kid solution you're proclaiming will save us.

Re:Nothing New

[localman]

According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7.

Though the experts were certainly wrong, let's not imply we're doing anywhere near a decent job of providing food for all mankind. Some 50,000 people die each day from starvation. Countless more live in a chronically malnourished state. True, this is not because of an inability to grow the food (probably what the experts predicted) but because of myriad other reasons from politics to economics to logistics.

Cheers.

Re:Nothing New

[Tynam]

A short while back I came across an old guy on my way through town who'd tripped and smashed his head open on a phone box.

So I skipped the game I was heading to and spent the next hour helping a drunk concussed guy into an ambulance.

Why should I help him? What made him special? What makes it my responsibility? I was standing right frikkin' there watching, that's why.

The 'people' who 'lived off the land' for thousands of years? Mostly illiterate, innumerate, and died at ages 35-40. If they were lucky.

You don't own a computer just because you're hard-working and smart. It's because you're smart and hard-working and had the insane good luck to be born as one of the small fraction of the world's population who get a starting point good enough that that makes a difference.

I don't need to know you to know that; the fact that you can post here makes it a near-as-dammit certainty.

As you said, some people live in disaster zones or wars and genuinely need help. This 'some people' is not a few stragglers; it's tens of millions. Where the hell do you think that UN aid goes? Look it up sometime. And until you do, you've been too lazy to comment on the issue, so don't.

The ignorance in this post is depressing, even for /.

Re:Nothing New

[elp]

Speaking as an African... You don't know what you are talking about. Most of the starvation is caused by dumb ass politicians. Zimbabwe on its own could probably feed most of Africa, unfortunately all the farms got stolen by Mugabe and "redistributed" which means given to the party faithful and families of politicians none of whom have a clue how to run a commercial farm.

All the rest of the starving countries have similar dumb political problems.

In central Africa the ground is so fertile you can literally toss an apple core on the ground and come back 3 weeks later to see an apple tree starting to grow.

Run properly Africa could probably feed most of the world.

Re:Nothing New

[Lars T.]

"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train.

Well, the train was already quite mature by then, and there were several elevated lines in New York. And of course the opening of the first NY subway line falls clearly out of that time range (1904).

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html
It's not like horse manure was the only problem BTW: "In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses. Special trucks were devised to remove dead horses; since the average weight of dead horses was 1,300 pounds, one text on municipal refuse advised that "trucks for the removal of dead horses should be hung low, to avoid an excessive lift."

The coming of the automobile dealt another large blow to the horse. Experimental motor cars had been around for a long time, but cities had always banned them. The crisis of the 1890s and early twentieth century, involving public health fears about pollution, traffic jams, and rising prices for both hay, oats, and urban land, made municipal governments and urban residents much more ready to switch to autos.

Re:OOOK

[wrook]

Absolutely! I hear you brother. I've totally lost confidence in *them*. Let's face it. Every time *they* have predicted the end of the world, *they* have been wrong. EVERY SINGLE TIME!

I mean, if once -- only one time -- *they* got it right, I'd be willing to listen. But let's face it. *They* must be absolutely insane, because in my long life (and my father's and his father's before him) I have *never* EVEN ONCE died a horrible death from a world wide disaster of our own making.

And like you say, technology *always* saves us (a fact that *they* are always too eager to sweep under the rug). Every time technology has saved us from imminent disaster, every single time mind you, it has been *technology* that has saved us. *They* would have us think that there are limits to what technology can do for us. But who are *they* anyway to say such nonsense. Let's just look at history.

I'm just so tired of all this crap. I say, let's forget these stupid scare mongers and get back to something *important* like getting terrorists out of our beautiful country!
]

Re:not correct

[Toonol]

So even though it's ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE it would be INSANE TO THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN?

Perhaps you mean we shouldn't just sit on our haunches and hope new technology comes along. I'd agree with that. But if you mean that new technology shouldn't be sought out as the solution to our problem... well, I'd like for you to get off the internet and go find a cave.

Re:OOOK

[theheadlessrabbit]

Its only 35 years ago every "Expert" and "Scientist" (sorry to kill your God here Atheists) was telling us we were heading for a new Ice Age.
Don't take my word for it, look it up.

ok, i did look it up. here are the results: /quote>...They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html

i don't know how you define the word "every, but "7 out of 42" is not certainly not how I would define it.

Not a failure of logic.

[Xest]

I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.

The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.

The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.

If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.

Re:OOOK

[Arker]

Yes, but the fact is, they arent starving due to a global food shortage as predicted.

They're starving due to politics. There is more than enough food being produced on earth to feed everyone on it. And the predictions we're referencing were clearly based on the idea that enough food could simply not be produced on this planet for the number of people now living on it. Advances in agricultural efficiency have dramatically increased the effective carrying capacity of the planet. The problem we're actually facing is not a lack of food - food is going to waste in some areas while people starve in other areas.

Horse Shit

[TapeCutter]

I get the joke but I'm not sure how we ended up on limits of growth and horse shit, that is not what TFPaper is about.

What it says is that IFF we stopped pumping out GHG tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the ocean to regain it's pre-industrial PH level. The ocean (and the shelled critters in it) is the largest C02 sink, too much CO2 makes the ocean slightly more acidic and this is already having a negative affect on said shelled critters ability to make shells, loss of coral reefs is the most publicised of these effects. Personally I hardly think it's surprising that it would take a long time for makind's CO2 spike to be aborsbed into the system if we all dropped dead tomorrow but science is about measurement and evidence, the question of "how long would it take" is as valid as any other.

limits of growth and horse shit

I like the horse story but the Dodo bird meat industry didn't fare quite as well. Tecnology may one day overcome that "temporary" glitch but until it does the Dodo meat industry went past it's own limit to growth in the 1700's(?). While we are LIMITED by our lack of terra-forming technology I think the most obvious limit to growth comes from from human shit, not horse shit.

As far as I am concerned we have no choice but to turn to technology to fix technology. However it's nice to have a "bug report" that clearly lays out what the problem is. Science is that bug report, without these kind of studies we wouldn't even recoginse the problem, and in fact many people still don't (just look at this thread for examples).

Re:Barbra Streisand

[GileadGreene]

That was not what they were teaching in schools 20 years ago. Oil was supposed to have run out about 1997 or 1998 and tin 1990ish.

Regardless of what you were taught in school 20 years ago, that's not what the actual Limits to Growth report said. There was a lot of bogus information propagated about the Limits to Growth report at the time it came out, largely by people who didn't like what it actually had to say. The reality is that the Limits to Growth report explored a number of different possible scenarios (varying assumptions such as the impact of technological change and of social policies), and found that most (but not all) scenarios seem to lead to some kind of "overshoot and collapse" in the mid to late 21st century. These were never meant to be precise predictions, but rather to provide some idea of the global system's behavioral tendencies. Interestingly, a recent study has found that the Limits to Growth "standard run" scenario tracks quite well with the actual observed behavior of the world over the last 30 years. As the abstract of that report says:

Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century. This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970-2000 with scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth. The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies.

You are missing why it happens

[tacokill]

There is plenty of food.

Where we struggle, as human beings, is getting it to the people who need it. Politics, not capability, determine who gets fed and who doesn't.
We have PLENTY of resources to feed 7bil, 8bil, or even 10bil people. That has never been the problem. It's our own selves that is the problem.

Some facts from a farm guy

[chris-chittleborough]

In actual fact we currently produce enough food for over 7 billion people. (Some is turned into ethanol, some grain is used to fatten up meat animals, some food goes to overweight people like me ... all because food prices are historically low.) The reason millions of people are starving today has nothing to do with global production shortages -- it's because of political failures.

Re:Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"?

[Dun Malg]

If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".

If you actually knew your history rather than assuming that things then were as things now, you'd know that the public transit system in New York was not built by the government, but by private enterprise looking to make a buck. The move to put it underground was funded by city bonds, but it the elevated train system was already there. Furthermore, "auto-centric" laws came as result of the mass adoption of automobiles by the public at large, not the other way around.

Re:First post

[psychicninja]

Weather is not even close to the same thing as climate. Remember when we learned that in High School freshman science class? I can say the average temperature will go up over the next number of years, but that doesn't mean I know if it will be cloudy on March 5th, 2010.

Re:First post

[SanityInAnarchy]

Global warming brought to you by the same people who can't tell you what the temperature will be next week, yet they can tell you what it will be a thousand years from now.

I can't tell you what temperature it will be tomorrow. We've had days as cold as -15 or so (with wind chill) and as warm as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, all in the same winter.

But I can tell you that it is winter, and without looking at the forecast, I can tell you that it will probably be cold. And I can also tell you, without much difficulty, that summer will be mostly warm, and winter will be mostly cold.

Like the REST of the planet has NOTHING to do with the climate.

Before humans, were forests ever clear-cut? There were forest fires, as a healthy part of the lifecycle of a forest, but were they ever completely cut down to roots?

Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?

Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?

So why is it so hard to believe that humans could be raising the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees every year?

There may actually be good arguments against global warming, but you're just embarrassing yourself, here. Ice shelves are melting. They are melting farther than before, and faster than before. There is more carbon dioxide, and the average temperature is rising.

Yes, we've had ice ages in the past. Yes, it's possible the planet will survive us -- in fact, it's more than likely that "the planet", the dirty ball of rock hurtling through space, will still be here. But I don't particularly want to live through an ice age, if I can help it -- or the opposite.

Let me ask you something. Since most scientists who actually have more than a passing familiarity with the subject overwhelmingly agree that climate change is happening -- since Ford himself has outright admitted that global warming is real, and that the internal combustion engine is contributing to the problem -- where's the motive for such a vast conspiracy? Or if it's vast stupidity, don't you think an intelligent scientist would have shown it to be so, and provided evidence to that effect -- rather than yet more evidence to support that the climate is changing, and that we are doing it?

Re:First post

[theodicey]

If anything understanding climate is more difficult than the weather

You're making an invalid assumption. Many systems are easier to predict and understand on a large scale.

For example, if I boil a pot of water, I can easily predict how its overall temperature will increase. It's much harder -- impossible in fact -- to predict exactly where bubbles will nucleate.

Overall temperature = climate. Location of the bubbles = weather.