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Doubling of CO2 Not So Tragic After All?
carvalhao writes "The Register reports on a study from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that claims that new climate models that account for the effects of increased CO2 levels on plant growth result on a 1.64 C increase for a doubling of CO2 concentrations, a far less gloomy scenario than previously considered."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification stop calling the huge change taking place "global warming" that make it sounds like nice cozy sauna. The effects are much more complicated.
Hopefully reports like this are taken as good news not fuel for the skeptics and deniers. Good news because we have a better chance and perhaps more time at managing with increased CO2
RGdot.com
All of those previous models are crap, but so too is this one most likely crap.
None of the climate models have shown skill at prediction, which is the only objective measure by which to conclude that a model is not crap.
Until they can do that, its crazy to formulate policy based on model results. You wouldnt get in an airplane designed by model results as crappy as these.
"His name was James Damore."
1.64DegC is still within the error bars for climate sensitivity that have not significantly changed since the 1970's; ie: 3.0DegC +/- 1.5 degC for a doubling of CO2.
The abstract itself claims: "By accelerating the water cycle, this feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming, reducing the land surface warming by 0.6C. Compared to previous studies, these results imply that long term negative feedback from CO2 induced increases in vegetation density could reduce temperature following a stabilization of CO2 concentration." [My emphasis] - In other words nature will suck up our excess if we stop pumping into the atmosphere faster than she can cope with it, which has been the assumption for many years.
Disclaimer: I'm not rubbishing the study I think it's a valuable in the effort to reduce the above mentioned error bars. However despite the inference of the summary it does not change the risk assesment one iota.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No, dumbass, that's celsius coordinates.
Yah! Finally! Some is asking the right question. Here are the wrong questions:
1) Is the climate warming or cooling?
2) Are humans responsible?
Here are the right questions:
3) What's going to happen that's so bad we have to "do something about" now?
4) When is that going to happen?
Maybe you need to answer the first two questions to answer the last two but if no-one is asking the last two then we're likely to run off half-cocked and implement political policy that does more harm than good. (see, for example, cap and trade).
How we know is more important than what we know.
A doubling of atmospheric CO2 partial pressure above a water surface will acidify it by approx. 0.2 pH units. (ref.)
If the last century is to go by, I doubt we're going to see an increase in vegetation anytime soon. We've already lost 20% of the Amazon since 1970.
Can you point to a published model that does NOT account for solar activity? Can you tell me why we have been launching space probes explicitly designed to constantly monitor solar acticvity if nobody is using the data?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Err... you mean the models the conspiracy theorists like to believe exist, which would link solar activity to global warming? The ones that would've predicted a decline in the warming trend over the last solar minimum. A decline that, well, didn't happen?
*Those* models?
They have a pretty crazy AGW-denier agenda. Models have long taken into account the effects of plant growth
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
The U.S. government is planning to build a giant machine to block the sun, their last and greatest enemy.
You mean... to block the oracle... now that sun is no longer?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Obviously, but the Reg have a track record about reporting on papers in completely dishonest and misrepresentative ways.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
No such thing was "determined", in either case - only questions raised about the solidity of the evidence.
In fact, the 1996 claim is now more solid than ever, and the 2010 claims are far from disproved at this time, only questioned.
Naturally your own creditbility suffers no such doubt.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Of course the sun has nothing to do with the warming of Earth. I mean, if it did, you'd expect other planets, such as Mars and Venus, to be warming up as well.
Be that as it may, the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen from about about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution, to about 380 ppm at present. The burden of proof is on those who believe that that's not going to have a noticeable impact to make their case, and if their conclusions are at all in doubt, the path of prudence is to not rock the boat, and do what we can to cut back on CO2 emissions.
Yes. If you imagine the Celsius scale horizontally from left to right, then 1,64 is 1 unit to the right of the freezing point of water, and 64 units up.
There is nothing absolutely nothing in the paper that suggests that the authors have studied any plants at all. They merely extrapolate an effect based on some very large assumptions that plants everywhere can be represented by a few simple parameters in their model. A look at most of the arid regions of the world, demonstrate that these assumptions are wildly optimistic. Ground cover in these regions is shrinking dramatically due to lack of soil moisture.
Just want to verify that everyone who is full-on convinced about the negative effects of climate change is a vegetarian. At this point it's essentially indisputable that eating meat -- particularly beef, but all meat due to second order effects aside from methane (increased fuel usage for the additional grain required to grow animals, etc) -- is a significant factor in greenhouse gas production. If every American became vegetarian, the reduction of greenhouse gasses would be greater than swapping out every SUV for an electric car. So, those of you pilloring consumers, government, or industry -- you've already made the switch, right? Cause you wouldn't want to be hypocritical.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
...then this might be good news.
If we don't slow down the rate we are clear-cutting rain forests, it's just a academic debate over what caused our impending doom the most.
There is no coming ice age. As the arctic warms one can expect the jet stream to become more unstable and with warming there is a lot more moisture in the air. While Scotts are suffering because of their proximity to the North Sea from too much snow, Russians are having a relatively mild time of it. If one looks at the global average, last year was tied for the hottest ever recorded during human history.
What accounts for the new ice-age we are entering, with year-to-year glacial expansion, and London's prospective 3rd white Christmas in a row?
Glacial expansion? I'm very interested in a link about growing glaciers. My impression is that most major glaciers (other than East Antarctica, obviously) are shrinking.
Also, keep in mind that London is not the entire world. Amsterdam is also having its second white Sinterklaas in a row (after decades of not even having any white Christmasses), but that means nothing on a global scale. It's perfectly possible for north-west Europe to become colder while the rest of the world gets warmer. Consider that we're at the same latitude as Moscow and Calgary. It's the warm gulf stream that's keeping us warm. Without it, expect an ice age in Europe, despite warming in the rest of the world.
Uh, no. We are not at all certain what caused the event. Guesses include large or multiple meteor impacts, increased volcanism, or sudden release of methane hydrates from the sea floor. Your last sentence belies the reason you excluded two of the three.
Yes. The precautionary principle v the law of unintended consequences. Both apply to either side of the debate, believe it or not, so it's not really the kind of argument you can come to a conclusion about.
You know, we don't actually know *what* causes ice ages (and no it's not the gulfstream) ... the long-term graphs seem to indicate pretty strongly that one is indeed coming :
http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/globalchange/images/temp-001.gif (source http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/globalchange/climate_change.asp)
I mean the graph has jumped 10 degrees downward 10 times like clockwork every 100000-110000 years or so. Seems logical that it will in fact jump again, doesn't it ? Last time it jumped was about 108000 years ago. So it's pretty much bound to jump again. And I repeat, we do *not* know what causes this, and the temperature drops like a stone (weather apparently goes from normal to ice age conditions, meaning permafrost in the northern sahara, and a *very* white Christmas in southern Mexico, while Florida becomes an ice sheet, just to give an idea how extreme this is, in less than 10 years). That's 10 years, triggered by some unknown event, after which America less inhabitable than Greenland. Even the deserts of the middle east will be cold conditions, and harsh winters, at best.
Of course the error margin on these data are like 500-1000 years, which is a lot of time. But while we don't know why or how, *something* is going to trigger an ice age, pretty soon now. But that's "pretty soon" in "very likely in the next 2000 years" ...
There's nothing like a climate debate to revamp people's passion for scientific scepticism. Oddly it doesn't seem to happen with other topics. Let's recap:
Burnhard (1031106) calls ocean acidification a "ridiculous Green bandwagon" and lumps it in with other "idiotic claims". Modded interesting.
Rockoon (1252108) states that "All of those previous models are crap, but so too is this one most likely crap.". Modded insightful.
Mashiki (184564) lets us know that "Models are garbage, even hindcasted.". Modded interesting.
Let me add further scepticism: Unless you cite a paper that you published in a peer-reviewed journal to back up your claim, you don't get to dismiss models that have been accepted in peer-reviewed journals.
My UID is prime. Hah!
The climate change thing is sold as a whole package, a "You believe all of this or you are a DENIER!" kind of thing. However it is really a series of arguments, and at each level someone might have questions. Even some of the basics there can be some questions about. I mean the most basic is "The Earth is getting warmer, outside of any currently known cycles and over a longer period of time." Ok, pretty strong evidence here, but still there is things to look in to. The temperature recording stations have not been controlled and monitored the way we might hope, the record is not as accurate as we would like. Probably nothing that affects any results but in good science you don't write shit off just because it might be inconvenient. That doesn't mean "Look we found a potential inaccuracy, throw it all out!" but it also doesn't mean that questions shouldn't be looked in to.
A bigger things to question would be all the dire predictions, that a couple degrees in temperature rise leads to massive problems, massive loss of life and so on. This really doesn't have any good evidence and is pretty close to fear mongering. Yes I'm aware there are computer models, appreciate that means nothing. You can make a computer model to say whatever you want, a model is only good if it accurately models things, if it has proven predictive power. There is a lot to question in the "Warming means our DOOM," part of the argument.
An even bigger question would be that in the case that is correct, that cutting emissions is the thing to do. The reason is best as we can tell the Earth has been much warmer, and colder, in the past than it is now. So real good chance that happens again, to think that we are in some magic time of stability where all variation has stopped would be extremely silly. Thus sooner or later, no matter what we do, the temperature will almost certainly shift multiple degrees. If that is truly going to be deadly to us, then the concentration needs to not be on what is causing this change, but how to survive such a change. It does no good to make drastic cuts to emissions and stop this change (presuming that it would indeed stop this change) only to then get hit with a change that humans DIDN'T cause and thus can't stop.
You can very well accept many of the fundamental ideas (like that the Earth is getting warmer) and yet still question the conclusions and policy propositions. This idea that it is part and parcel, that you have to accept EVERYTHING, all the premises, all the conclusions and all the policy without question or your are a DENIER is false. It also leads one to question what the hell is going on. A student of human behaviour immediately recognizes that tactic: That of a con man. That is how people peddling fake crap, religions, and other things that don't stand up to scrutiny do it. They present their show and shout down anyone who questions it at all. They attack people who question because they know their argument does not stand up to questioning. Only blind acceptance of the entire package is acceptable, anything else draws hostility.
As such one may wonder why this is done with regards to climate change. It makes some of us nervous.
"Climate change" is such a clever slogan because climate, almost by definition, is and has always been changing. So far, so good. It should be unsurprising, however, that skepticism is evoked when any idea, especially a scientific theory, is so passionately embraced by political movements spawned to both advance the theory and "solve" the expected ill. Yes, propaganda can be targeted for good or ill intent, but when it becomes so loud, obnoxious, and ubiquitous that it attempts to discourage all legitimate debate, intentions matter little regardless how pure and saintly the proponents. Sorry to say I just come equipped with activist warning lights. When it comes to the depth of our understanding of systems so complex and paradoxically subtle as climate, ham-handed political "solutions" are far more likely to spawn unknown and unintended consequences than mitigation to ascribed risks.
There's a few problems with your statement:
1) "Climate change" isn't a slogan, it's the name of the problem. A slogan would be "More cars, less land".
2) While the climate does change naturally, it changes naturally on a much slower time scale than we are currently experiencing. That's why scientists usually talk about Anthropogenic Climate Change.
3) There are political movements spawned to fix many different problems, and all of them provide "solutions" for the expected ills of the problem. It wouldn't be a political movement if it didn't propose solutions to the problem. This is expected.
4) Skepticism is good, and thus many people like to think or pretend that they're skeptics. It's usually pretty easy to spot the people who only claim to be skeptics because they do not critically examine their own evidence only the evidence of others.
5) At some point debate has to end, there is literally no benefit to having to argue every day over whether 2+2=4 and whether gravity will continue working tomorrow.
6) Ham-handed political solutions always spawn unknown and unintended consequences. The benefits of taking action have to weighed against the risks.
Most of the world would rather be talking about the benefits and drawbacks of different solutions to the problems posed by climate change, however, as long as the so-called debate over whether the problem actually exists it's difficult to have a rational discussion about what to do about the problem. Upton Sinclair wrote in one of his books: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!", and the debate over climate change has certainly demonstrated the profoundity of that statement. At some point, the debate has to end, regardless of how many people would rather that it continue until after they have retired and their salaries are no longer dependent on the problem not being addressed. There will always be a question of how much evidence is enough.
That's something you might need to ask yourself. What would actually convince you that climate change represents a danger to the lives of millions, possibly billions of people?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The only reason "global warming" didn't "pan out" is that there are too many idiots around who call BS every time it snows because they can't comprehend that the warming is on average. What "global warming" really means is that you're adding more energy to the system and thereby increasing volatility -- hot places get hotter, cold places get colder, storms get stronger, droughts get drier. It's like how the surface of a glass of water gets less flat when you shake it. But you dumbasses just don't fucking get it, so it got renamed "climate change" to try to help you understand.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, not really. This is Europe, not America.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
1. Regardless of whether you like the term climate change or not, and whether or not your paranoia is justified, climate change is still not a slogan.
2. 2010 is on track to be the warmest year on record. I'm not sure how this plays into your claim that temperatures are falling. In fact, as I understand it, the 10 hottest years on record are (in order): 2010*, 1998, 2005, 2009, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2001. That list doesn't look much like "temperatures are falling". In fact, NASA is predicting that 2012 will likely displace 2010 as the hottest year on record.
3. Carbon taxes would not allow the skimming of profits to private funds and banking cartels. As a "tax" it would be going to governments. Cap and trade, on the other hand, would most definitely result in profit form private enterprises. In fact, I dare say, the whole idea of cap and trade is based on the idea that is better from private industry to profit than for the government to profit from the production of CO2.
4. We should be skeptical of all claims, not just those of people we disagree with. Many of your views, in particular, seem to be wildly out of sync with reality. A little more healthy skepticism of the people who you agree with might help you back to some views grounded in reality.
5. This is a perfect example of why debate has to eventually end. If you dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as a fraud or con artist then there can only ever be one satisfactory end to a debate. Now imagine there is at least one person who thinks the same way as you on the other side. The debate is now eternal, regardless of the merits of the arguments.
6. You might like to look at some the temperature graphs. The line is still trending upwards. It's true that 1998 and 2005 were the top 2 warmest years on record. However, the average global temperature for 2009 was virtually the same as the temperature of 2005. We expect to see warming and cooling cycles related to El nino and El nina effects. The next year that is likely to experience similar conditions to 1998 is expected to be 2012.
Yes, weather events do kill people every year, however, climate change is making many natural disasters worse and the greatest threats aren't from freak weather conditions but from changes systematic changes in agricultural areas. If once fertile areas are rendered minimally fertile due to repeated flooding, droughts, and pest migrations, it will likely take years (at best) to replace them. War and famine triggered by climate change represent the biggest threats from climate change. It is in our best interest to carefully consider what the consequences of each action is, including the consequences of inaction.
* As 2010 is not yet done, in theory there still remains a chance that it will be the second or third warmest year on record.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Not only that, most people fail to make the connection that the primary sponsors of terrorism are currently Saudi Arabia and Iran (Also notable as the top 2 oil exporters). In particular, there are a few oil billionaires in those countries who are deliberately funding radical Muslim jihadists. A dramatic reduction in oil consumption would likely do more to combat terrorism than sending soldiers to the Middle East.
So to U.S. keeps giving money to the primary sponsors of terrorism so they can fight terrorism. It's a no win situation, as long as you have to pay the people you're fighting for the privilege of fighting them.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Alternatively
"It is EASY to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him understanding it!"
Apparently police officers, lawyers, prison guards... all tend to be against drug legalization. It's not hard to understand... they're jobs depend on it.
Teachers all tend to be against school choice... It's not hard to understand... they like the public school monopoly.
At times I'm amazed. People are so quick to scream about the corporate and military industrial complex. Oh lockheed martin loves war!. Bush went to war for oil! Yet these seem people cannot see the same 'profit' motives drives teachers, police officers, doctors, nurses, engineers, and yes scientists.
There is no 'pure' profession of people. People who think scientists are 'pure' are like those who thought the church should lead society because all priests are good people who follow (biblical, koranic...insert whatever code). If you ever point to people that scientists should not lead society, they say... 'scientists have a code of peer review!'
I personally think climate change is happening. I've yet to see any proposal from politicians that actually helps to deal with it.
I remember Dean's climate change proposal was to have a carbon tax... then funnel that money into healthcare?
Just think about this for a second. Humanity is supposedly at risk... billions of lives at stake... and instead of taking the money from carbon taxes to fund I dunno (levies, relocating people away from shorelines...), he wants to plow it into a scheme for healthcare.
It's far too political these days to have sensible policy.
My own view is we're far too along in the climate change cycle to stop it. Several other scientists have made this point as well. I'd much rather see us plan to deal with increased see levels, drought... than spend billions upon billions in the hopes of stopping it.
What I mean is this... if I had 20 billion to spend to combat climate change.
I'd spend 15 billion improving levies, relocating people, improving irrigation...and 5 billion on 'green' efforts.
When sea levels rise, I'd rather have actual defence against it... as opposed to a wind farm while my city floods.
I think it is the prudent thing to do.
Yet, where is this in our global warming proposals? No where to be seen. Because 99% of the efforts about climate change or global warming are doing nothing to deal with the problem. They're just interested in transferring money to this group or that group, or pushing people vision of society, or trying to create jobs...
And climate change is only one of the issues facing us. Far too many people seem to think the ends justify the means. Oh don't worry about the debt, the economy, state power... just do everything to solve climate change. Sorry, climate change isn't the biggest worry in the world. It is a worry, but it is not everything. Far too many people have this narrow tunnel vision as well.
That is politics unfortunately. An unavoidable part of life. And yes, that means dealing with people who might not understand the issue. The alternative is to think some 'high council' should just make decisions. It's very appealing to academics... until they realize... how easily 'high councils' get corrupted or that they really don't have any power... beyond what the politicians give them. There can never be a scientist led society for this reason.
And if the people don't trust the government or don't trust certain groups as the solution to climate change... I'll put my backing with the people.
If nothing gets done... just move away from the coast line. We'll adapt as humanity.
I'd love to solve the issue... but not at all costs.. and our political leader have certainly not earned the trust of their citizenry to tackle the issue with the large resources they demand.