Draft of IPCC 2013 Report Already Circulating

First time accepted submitter iggymanz writes "More precise modeling has changed some long term climate predictions: sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century, but past dire warnings of stronger storms or more frequent droughts won't pan out. Instead there will be less strong storms, but peak winds in the tropics might be slightly higher. Temperature rise of global average will be about 3 degree C total, including the 1 degree C rise over the 20th century. In places where precipitation is frequent, it will become even more frequent; in arid areas, the tendency will be to become even drier. Some new arid areas are expected to appear in the south of N. America, South Africa and Mediterranean countries. Overall, hardly a doomsday scenario."

Comments

Re:I still don't get it...

[yotto]

Because the scum of the Earth doesn't mind ignoring facts while siphoning money from the stupid?

Alien Civilizations

[arisvega]

Now that the number of planets around stars in this galaxy alone is in the ballpark of several billions, one starts to think that the reason for no apparent alien civilizations similar to this one is because they boil themselves out .. they simply raise the temperature of their own place before they are able to either counter the effect, or before they are tech savvy enough to colonize someplace else: they either boil, starve, or poison themselves.

If this projection is correct, and the effect grows at an exponential rate, it will be 1 degree for the last century, (order of) 3 for the next, 9 for the one after that, and then it is either super-tech or extinction.

Careful now, humans.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[CRCulver]

Now that the number of planets around stars in this galaxy alone is in the ballpark of several billions, one starts to think that the reason for no apparent alien civilizations similar to this one is because they boil themselves out .. they simply raise the temperature of their own place before they are able to either counter the effect, or before they are tech savvy enough to colonize someplace else.

This idea has been around for a few decades now. In Larry Niven's Ringworld , the alien race the Puppeteers had moved their homeworld further away from their sun some centuries before the start of the novel, in order to avoid the death by heat that Niven felt would accompany technological development.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[vlm]

they either boil, starve, or poison themselves.

I'd put money on primary energy. Base your whole culture and economy on petrochemicals, use them up, then ? There could be a trillion "successful" civilizations out there right now living a vaguely ancient/medieval lifestyle, with legends of having billions of people burning hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in their distant past, but today its a couple million peasants with wax candles and ox power.

Its a depressing anti-fission anti-fusion anecdote... if any other culture in the universe could have harnessed fission or fusion effectively, we'd currently be a province of their galactic star empire, or at least we'd have detected them by now. Since that seems not to be the case, I'm not overly optimistic about our odds with those energy sources. So when the oil and coal is burned up, that's it. Back to 1700 at best.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[O('_')O_Bush]

For all we know we are a province of their empire. Being conquered doesn't mean you are entitled to knowing about it if your technological advancement is so low that you can't participate in the greater galaxy...

Re:Alien Civilizations

[O('_')O_Bush]

We have been polluting heavily for a hundred years or so, but we are already able to counter the effect of global warming (look at all the schemes for changing climate, from space mirrors to simulated volcanic eruptions, to painting a small part of the earth white). The biggest obstacles are willpower for funding and lack of need/urgency.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[vlm]

Participate does not equal see. The natives saw the guys with muskets and cannons and giant wooden ships, even if they couldn't get involved in court politics or academic research back home.

Another interesting sci fi book plot or whatever is more than one group of savages (aka us, interpret us as pronoun or united states as you wish) might exist. Sure the neo-roman empire ignores and laughs at us savages as a group, but there should be other just slightly more civilized planets, yet still savages compared to the overlords, doing all kinds of stuff we'd notice, like tossing radioactive waste into their sun screwing up the stellar spectrum, or broadcasting RF all over the place, or doing strange things with neutrinos and graviton sources, or extensive civil engineering with H-bombs, or terraforming other planets in their solar system, or attempting to build a dyson sphere, or fill their upper atmosphere with fluorocarbons, all stuff we'd see other savages doing even if the overlords ignored all of us savages as a group, which is interesting.

I've read Kraus et al about interstellar radio detection, I wonder if anyone out there has run similar numbers for pulsed neutrino generation and detection. I don't care quite enough to shovel thru arxiv for hours, but if some /.er has a useful lead to speed the search? That would make an interesting SETI technique with a built in "you must be this tall" sign to keep the rabble out, apparently EM radiation isn't nearly sufficient. "You must build a cryogenic 100 KM gravitation wave detector to participate in the intergalactic interspecies internet" or "You must be able to generate, control, and detect a neutrino flux equivalent to a major particle accelerator with a 10 amp beam current to participate in the interstellar interspecies internet"

Re:Alien Civilizations

[semi-extrinsic]

An interesting counter-argument is that we could, by chance, be one of the first civilizations to achieve the technological level we are currently at. Given what we know (or think we know) about the history of star formation in the universe, e.g. that the early stars going nova are the primary source of heavier elements (required for fission, hell, even for semiconductors), this is not unreasonable.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[Charliemopps]

Those books were garbage and I'm ashamed to have read them. Someone told me they were hard scifi... but instead it was a furry anime style series of bad science. All of his books, in fact, are pretty much garbage.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[vlm]

Yeah it would be pretty bad. Fictionally, exploring the 1700s has been pretty popular to the point of tiresome. Nobody has explored taking modern culture back to 1700s tech. Even the "1632" series assumes the world's resources are ready for taking (again). "Survivalist" lit doesn't talk about much but the gun battles on the way down. A 1700s tech planet with 2000s culture would be pretty interesting to explore, after all the annoying population reduction is long taken care of. Scientists, doctors, engineers who have all the knowledge but none of the tech would be interesting.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[arisvega]

e.g. that the early stars going nova are the primary source of heavier elements

Massive stars go supernova within a few million years from their creation: solids have been around in the Solar system for at least 4.567 billion years (from meteoritic studies), and the universe is at minimum 14.5 billion years old (cosmology arguments). There are already plenty of visible galaxies where star formation is not proceeding as fast as in this one.

And, in light of new evidence, numerous planets around most stars seem to be the rule rather than the exception.

So, plenty of time to develop life similar to this one, even if one needs 2 billion years from rocks to bacteria, another 2 from bacteria to apes, and only another tiny -in comparison- 200,000 years perhaps to get the apes to do their own rocket science.

That said, in my opinion I do not think that the low initial metalicity is much of a convincing counter-argument here.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Nobody has explored taking modern culture back to 1700s tech.

You might be interested in Stirling's Emberverse series. I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions about what would happen in this scenario--for one thing, I think he assumes that civilization would actually fall too far and too fast, in contrast to the overly optimistic outcome of the 1632 series--but it's a good read.

He also has to invoke something kind of mystical to make this happen. There's no realistic hard-SF scenario under which the entire world reverts to a pre-industrial technological level all at once. Far more likely is a situation in which the resources necessary to maintain the modern first-world lifestyle are gradually depleted with corresponding hoarding, and we end up in a neo-feudal world of a high-tech elite surrounded by starving peasants.

Re:Alien Civilizations

[dpilot]

My guess is that once you take 2000s tech out of 2000s people, you won't have 2000s culture, either. Take away the tech and the population will crash. People tend not to like participating in a population crash, and don't do so peacefully.

Two conspiracy theories for your consideration, and both have a common root:
"They" know that there is no graceful way we can get from where we are to a sustainable word - there are just too many people. Even birth control and China-like birth policies won't do it fast enough. Beyond that, even trying to do so will deplete the ecosystem terribly - the safest route is a population crash. It will be chaotic, but the ecosystem would have a better shot at recovery. In that same vein, "they" have an enclave to preserve science, etc, for rebuilding after. To hasten the crash, they simply permit/encourage short-sighted thinking, such as climate denial and hyper-nationalism.
Conspiracy Theory 1 - "They" don't really give a hoot about mankind, "they" just want to be in charge, and see this as a route to having exclusive ownership of science and technology, to cement "their" position on top.
Conspiracy Theory 2 - "They" really are enlightened, see this as a sad but necessary step forced by circumstances, and will do their best to craft a better world after the crash.

Far more likely than either - it's just plain short-term thinking, combined with a hefty dose of denial and an overblown sense of entitlement.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[Anonymous Coward]

Republic Broadcasting Network.

On the whole

[Trisha-Beth]

I'd rather have more accurate models than more precise models.

Bad models don't get any better by adding decimal places.

I expect that accurate modelling of something as complex as climate is really, really hard.

Re:On the whole

[tolkienfan]

I'm pretty sure they mean more accurate. Many people incorrectly use "precise" and "accurate" interchangeably.
The article mentions using faster computers. Anyone who's done modelling knows that you can do more steps in the same amount of time, resulting in increased accuracy. They also mention better modelling.

Re:On the whole

[Giant Electronic Bra]

This is a deep misunderstanding of complex non-linear dynamic systems. You may not be able to say what the PRECISE state of the system will be, as in exactly when it will rain for the weather, or which region will have exactly what rainfall for climate, but you CAN quite confidently map the basins of the various attractors and understand the ensemble state of the system. In other words you don't have to know the precise climate in every little region to know the overall climate. This is ESPECIALLY true of the climate because there is a phase space that represents the possible states. In other words the laws of physics basically govern the overall climate, if one area turns out a bit drier than you predicted then another one has to be a bit wetter because the rain has to fall SOMEWHERE. Excess heat in the system has to go somewhere, and eventually it has to drive increased evaporation, increased temperatures, etc. This stuff is just constrained by basic physical laws. The only real arguments at this point are about ACTUAL regional conditions and details like whether or not the extra rainfall in an area will fall in big storms or more small storms for instance. It is very true that models will not precisely predict these things. It may be impossible to do so, but that doesn't make the models useless at all.

Re:I still don't get it...

[Joce640k]

How did real estate in Florida ever get so overpriced in the run up to 2008, if anyone out there is taking rising sea levels seriously?

Simple: Only old people go to live there so they figure they'll be dead when it happens...

Re:I still don't get it...

[vlm]

Question doesn't make sense. Its all "greater fool theory". Doesn't matter if its a bad buy because the price is high or the sea is rising. As long as you think there's a greater fool out there to buy it from you at a higher price (because real estate only goes up!) then go for it. Like all bubbles, it works great until it doesn't.

Also if you think modern McMansions are built to last the century or so required to be flooded, you have a rough discovery process ahead. I don't think flooding in a century is a serious concern if a hurricane will destroy it every decade and/or black mold and/or mutant alligator infestations and/or fresh groundwater will all be gone in a couple decades and/or its unlivable for most people without stable electrical grid AC etc. Its kind of like me being worried that within perhaps 5 thousand years its nearly guaranteed that my house will be underneath a two mile sheet of glacial ice, because its happened a zillion times before and will happen again.... yeah but I don't think my 1950s ranch will be around in 6950 AD for other reasons, so I'm not concerned with the inevitable return of the glaciers.

Re:ENOUGH ALREADY !! CAN'T DO SHIT ABOUT IT ANYWAY

[Joce640k]

Just sit back and chill !! You can't do anything about it !! NO !! You CAN'T !!

Not as long as the disinformation campaign is running in the USA, no.

Re:How surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but what do you expect a scientist to do?

"Oh well, we did the prediction as scientifically accurate as possible, but it's still a pretty gloomy outcome predicted.
Better tone down the ecological and economical consequences so they can continue with business as usual"?

Re:ENOUGH ALREADY !! CAN'T DO SHIT ABOUT IT ANYWAY

[vlm]

Just sit back and chill !! You can't do anything about it !! NO !! You CAN'T !!

Sure you can. Move. Its not that hard, depending where you live. I live near a great lake, the supposed increase in extremes of weather is roughly equivalent to moving about 5% further away from the lake. So I need to move "about" a mile east. Having to move a mile toward the lake sucks for the rich people already living on the lakeshore, but they're the people most able to afford it anyway.

My distant ancestors immigrated to farmland about 100 miles north roughly the same distance from the lake. Absolute worst case screaming eco-nut scenario however highly unlikely, means my GGG-grandkids would have to move 100 miles north to my ancestral homeland to have the same climate as when I was a kid. No big deal.

Wake me when they're growing bananas in Chicago out in the open air, or a hurricane strikes Milwaukee, then I'll get worried about it.

Pretty doomsday to me

[david.given]

sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century ... hardly a doomsday scenario

I believe you don't realise quite how many people live within a vertical metre of sea level.

Re:Pretty doomsday to me

[Anonymous Coward]

sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century ... hardly a doomsday scenario

I believe you don't realise quite how many people live within a vertical metre of sea level.

A lot live BELOW sea level and they are doing fine. One meter levees? Piece of cake. One century to build that? One meter levees don't even need to be reinforced with concrete. A small strip of land will be more than enough. And we can have beaches on coast side of the levee.

Re:Pretty doomsday to me

[war4peace]

Also I would like to point out that TFA pretty much ignores anything else than next century. If this trend accelerates, how would the world look like 500 years from now? If you think that's a LONG time, consider that mankind was traversing oceans 500 years ago.

Re:Pretty doomsday to me

[Anonymous Coward]

You're glossing over the fact that that's a one meter rise in _mean_ sea level. Oscillating tides can change that to be +/- 5 meters in some places (e.g. Cook Inlet of Alaska, or the Bay of Fundy). Depending on the weather, storm surges can potentially have another additive affect. Most readers should be familiar with a normal distribution, where a subtle change in the mean can have a disproportionate affect on the extremes. So if you're expecting a one meter rise, to protect your coastal infrastructure from an extreme event such as a storm surge would generally require you to built levies well above that mean change.

Re:Pretty doomsday to me

[Rockoon]

If you think that's a LONG time, consider that mankind was traversing oceans 500 years ago.

1903 we first took flight.
1942 we flew the first operational jet fighter.
1961 we put the first man in space.
1969 we put the first man on the moon.
1971 we put the first space station in orbit.
1980 we put the first re-usable vehicle into space.
Today there are over a dozen private companies with space flight capability.

500 years from now? You can't even begin to imagine what technology will be available. The only thing that you can be sure of is that it will look like magic.

Re:Pretty doomsday to me

[AdamHaun]

It's never been about doomsday for the whole planet. It's about poverty, war, and general misery for billions. But Slashdot Libertarians are still stuck in their echo chamber where anything less than a massive asteroid strike is preferably to a tax increase. Didn't you know that the suffering of poor people is really just a plot to take away your money?

Some new arid areas are expected to appear in the south of N. America, South Africa and Mediterranean countries. Overall, hardly a doomsday scenario.

Oh, just some "new arid areas". No big deal. If you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. Maybe you should read a bit about the massive drought that hit Texas last year. Or the many, many wildfires due to our entire state being a tinderbox. August in Houston was extra fun, with 29 out of 31 days reaching highs over 100 degrees F, with all-time highs of 109 F being reached on four separate days. Maybe you'd rather see some pictures, if that's your thing -- look, I Googled it for you! You know it's bad when people are hoping for a hurricane to bring drought relief.

Let me make this simple for you: no water = no agriculture, no cities, few people, lots of fires. Texas has 25 million people. That's a lot of misery you can spread around. A lot of potential refugees moving to your neighborhoods. But clearly letting my state be destroyed is preferable to allowing TEH EVIL (nonexistent) MARXISTS enact their EVIL (nonexistent) SOCIALIST AGENDA! (Which everyone in the world except Slashdot Libertarians is in on, of course.) Those evil socialists just hate the obvious solution of having billions of people and most of our agriculture pack up and move. But not Slashdot Libertarians! In addition to being IT administrators, they're *also* the worldwide experts in the economics of relocating entire populations, and can tell you with 100% certainty that it's super-cheap and mostly painless as long as we let the free market work its magic! Unlike carbon taxes which will instantly destroy the world economy! Because Cambodia!

(I really heard someone here compare fighting climate change to Cambodian communism once. Incidentally, Cambodian communism was all about forcibly relocating large populations, but if you want to be a good Slashdot Libertarian, you don't sweat the details.)

Exploding bullshit detector here...

[TapeCutter]

Olaf Stampf.

Re:I still don't get it...

[tolkienfan]

Global warming doesn't care whether you believe in it.

Hardly doomsday?

[SirGarlon]

Let's compute the total market value of all coastal real estate below 1m elevation before we declare this "hardly a doomsday scenario."

Let's also factor in the costs of re-aligning all land use to the new climate and the impact of that re-alignment on the global food supply.

I'm not qualified to do that analysis, myself -- but I would venture, neither is the Slashdot editor who commented so dismissively on the report.

Re:Hardly doomsday?

[dkf]

Rather than let the sea have that land, can't we build a 1m tall levee?

You can, but you've got a lot of those levees to build. Better get on with it. Oh, and you've got to also figure out what to do about awkward cases like salt marshes (which aren't exactly sea or land, but rather somewhere in between) and you need to build bigger levees behind the first ones to deal with the fact that the sea doesn't stay at one level, but rather moves up and down with tides and storms; a 1m levee is unlikely to be enough given the consequences of catastrophic failure.

Levees can protect some of the coast, but definitely not everywhere. It's too hard to do and not cost effective when you expand to protecting thousands of miles...

Re:Hardly doomsday?

[iggymanz]

what nonsense. what is the value of all property in Detroit 50 years ago compared to now? over a timespan of even half a century people can move, things can radically change. new things can be built, old things abandoned, foundations and streets can be raised.

Re:How surprising...

[tolkienfan]

Correlation is an important tool. It might be the most important tool.

But, climate scientists use more than correlation. They build ever more accurate models, and test them for their ability to make predictions. Like a lot of science actually.

Texas Drought Should Also Be a Concern

[eldavojohn]

sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century ... hardly a doomsday scenario

I believe you don't realise quite how many people live within a vertical metre of sea level.

Well, that's a valid point however hamanity's war with the sea is nothing new and the Dutch have become quite adept at it (with 20% of their country being reclaimed land). Now, that has a whole bunch of caveats about how much trouble they face is that system ever fails and we've all probably heard about that. I would bet that if people believed these reports, some relatively inexpensive measures could be taken to prevent a much more expensive catastrophe. I don't know how much these efforts could help Florida -- an occasional hurricane might make them a bigger problem. But engineers have been tackling this problem.

For the United States, I think a bigger doomsday scenario of this is for agriculture in Texas. Texas already lost $7.62 billion in agricultural this year and if you're telling me that that part of North America is going to get more arid? Well, droughts are something that humans have long had problems with. You can build all the irrigation you want but when that's dried up, there's not a lot you can do. If you like to eat beef and if you like Texas to be a productive state in the union, you should probably be concerned about this.

Re:Texas Drought Should Also Be a Concern

[hackertourist]

I would bet that if people believed these reports, some relatively inexpensive measures could be taken to prevent a much more expensive catastrophe

The Netherlands expect to spend over E100B until the year 2100 on combating the consequences of rising sea levels. Doable for a rich country, but not exactly cheap.

Re:Texas Drought Should Also Be a Concern

[eldavojohn]

So then beef production moves slightly north?

This is a confusingly ignorant misunderstanding that I constantly see reiterated on Slashdot. There is only a finite amount of arable land and that is 18% of the United States with 0.21% of that being permanent crops. From this site, you can see in this graph that the figure of 18% actually fluctuates. Now, there's a lot of factors at play but drought is a big one and this idea that you "just move the cattle North" to the new land is downright laughable. Temperature is not the only factor in making land arable. Why does Iowa produce more corn than per acre than any other state? Well, the soil has a lot to do with it but also the temperature is better than, say, Minnesota even though there's a lot of corn and soy grown in Minnesota.

During the dust bowl of the 1930s, we should have learned that you can't just "move cattle and farming North a bit" to avoid droughts. We also should have learned how important it is to combat erosion and protect our water supplies.

What happened last season in Texas was they failed to grow their own roughage (hay, straw, alfalfa, sorghum, etc) for their steers to eat and so they paid top dollar to have it shipped down to them and other states profited from Texas' loss. This is not a sustainable model. Moving cattle northward will not work, there is a reason ranching flourished in Texas -- any areas north of there that have the same conditions have long become ranches. Even if someone does the math and says "Oh, hey, this area of Montana here is going to be highly sought after" it's not like a massive ranch in Texas can pick up operations and move them to Montana in a single season. You're going to see restructuralization problems and the United States consumer will cry highway robbery when their already subsidized McDonald's burger costs $1.33 instead of $0.99. Should Texas become akin to Arizona, our economy will feel it.

Or maybe I can finally get grass fed beef from the USA?

You can already buy this from Montana and other states. The problem is how much grassland can support free roaming cattle. Again, a lesson learned from the Dust Bowl, we need to build ranches and feed them in order to prevent top soil erosion. If you demand they be free roaming and you calculate it, beef will become incredibly expensive and not a viable option for the entire populace.

Over all a small increase in the price of beef is not the end of the world. The decreased red meat consumption would probably be a good thing on average for us.

Right, those grapes were sour anyway?

Texas still has lots of oil and natural gas.

So? Most states depend on multiple sources of revenue, right? You should be alarmed when any major industry faces a major problem. Otherwise, why not just kill off all the other industries and embrace "lots of oil and natural gas"? Well, that's simple, you use what you got and Texas is losing arable land to grow food for their cattle.

Its agriculture was living on borrowed time anyway. Once the aquifer went dry that was coming to an end.

An unsustainable agricultural strategy is bad agriculture. Doesn't everything -- even your oil and natural gas -- depend on the availability of water? You make it sound like we just turned Texas into Mars and probably for the better? Ruining land is not the answer and this report states that Texas will get more arid so measures should be taken to at least prepare for that, wouldn't you think?

Paren't point

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming doesn't care whether you believe in it.

But the people who don't believe in it will not even consider that their Florida beachside home may be under water in a couple of decades. Therefore, the folks who see the seas rising will sell their beach side properties for a premium to the folks who are: sticking their heads in the sand; folks who think GW is a Liberal hoax; and folks who think the property is just high enough that they won't be effected.

1. Find people who don't believe in GW.

2. Sell (currently beach side; underwater later) property to them.

3. Profit!

Re:Paren't point

[Anonymous Coward]

But the people who don't believe in it will not even consider that their Florida beachside home may be under water in a couple of decades

Look at the people getting beachfront homes before the whole global warming thing. Nearly without exception they're all wealthier (though not necessarily 1%ers) paying top dollar for beachfront property, then crying to FEMA when the hurricane wiped them out. Then they'd build on the same spot again.

Rationality is not humans' strong point.

Re:Paren't point

[runeghost]

How is getting someone else to pay for building you a brand new house every decade or two irrational?

Re:Paren't point

[rgbatduke]

Go for it. Bear in mind that the actual data is that SLR is around 3 mm/year -- depending on how short a segment of the data you are willing to cherrypick to prove a point. Since the assertion is made above that SLR is supposed to be a meter more than previously claimed -- hence around 2 meters or even more -- and since here we are in 2012 with SLR having gone up a whole inch (to the nearest inch) in the last decade -- we have to take something like 78 inches and split it up among 88 years. Hmm, if SLR went up by an order of magnitude next year we might just make it.

Otherwise, bear in mind that people who currently have beachfront property could die of old age before SLR becomes an issue for them. You (dear reader) could die of old age before SLR gets high enough to realize a profit on land you bought inland anticipating that it would become oceanfront. Or not.

rgb

Re:Paren't point

[rgbatduke]

One should indeed! One should also be very leary of fitting any kind of fit, linear or nonlinear, to data over only 10-15 years that has varied rather consistently over 140 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise. Personally, I think the figure says all one could possibly need to say. Note well that anthropogenic CO_2 was completely irrelevant over almost all of this time series even according to the IPCC. Note also the overall range of the entire chart, roughly 1/4 of which supposedly incorporates "substantial" anthropogenic global warming -- just under 9 inches in 140 years. Note also that there are several periods with rise rates comparable to the present, for even longer periods, e.g. 1938-1950, where CO_2 was again not a factor even according to the IPCC reports.

It may be absolutely true that global climate models predict large amounts of sea level rise, but there is no actual evidence in the form of large rises in sea level to support this! . Perhaps there will be in the future. Perhaps not. I'm a theoretical physicist, and I just love theories. I'm a computational physicist, and love large scale model computations. But at the end of the day, I'm just a physicist, and the theories and computations have to agree with observation. So far, these do not, not even over the last 140 years, and they don't even give us insight into the large climate fluctuations observed over the last (fill in the blank with any number greater than 1000) number of years.

In the meantime, I work every summer literally living at the edge of the ocean facing straight out through the Beaufort inlet in North Carolina. Although I know that tidal gauge data indicates that there has been a sea level rise there over the time I've been working there or otherwise visiting, I certainly can't see it in my own (literal) back yard, where if there were any substantial and consistent rise -- I'm talking a rise of a few inches -- my back yard would be underwater at high tide. My neighbors have lived in their houses for over 40 years, and (yes, I've asked) haven't observed any rise at all, let alone an alarming one, of the highwater marks on their docks or seawalls (where the tops of their docks would be underwater at high tide if there were any consistent rise). This is absolutely anecdotal evidence, although the ocean being isostatic it is difficult to imagine it going up one place and not everyplace else, but see the curve above for the best global tidal gauge and satellite data in summary.

If you looked at this data and didn't know it was "sea level rise" and destined to rise because of Evil Human Activity -- if you were told it was the sales price of widgets, or the mean length of romance novels, over time -- and were asked "is there a statistically meaningful acceleration in trend" visible anywhere in the record -- you wouldn't even bother to do an actual statistical analysis because the answer is fairly evidently "no". If you were asked to estimate how likely it is that any aspect of this trend would justify a final sales figure for widgets of 48 (9 plus 39 more) in only 88 more years -- that would be over four times the entire growth over 142 years in only 90 years -- you wouldn't hesitate to give odds of 99 to 1 against. Bayesian analysis might alter the 99 to 1, sure (depending on how sure you are about your priors) but not even Bayes is going to comfortably make this 99 to 1 for.

I'm just sayin'...

rgb

(I will now wait for the usual "refutation" of this, the assertion I'm being paid off by the oil industry or the like. I wish. Instead, take due note of my Russell quote, below.)

Re:Paren't point

[tolkienfan]

I agree with most of what you said.

Only a few things, though:
1. They aren't fitting a curve to actual sea levels, and then extrapolating.
2. There is evidence that changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere can have an effect - just look at CFCs.
3. The most accurate way to test climate models would be to make a series of predictions, and then compare to actual data. Unfortunately that would take a couple of decades. Considering the accelerating rate of gas release, some of us think it's unwise to wait for such an experiment to complete before taking action.
4. The sea level rise is estimated from the extra volume of liquid water from ice melt. We know ice is melting.
5. A sea rise of a few inches won't necessarily affect your highest tide for many years.

Many think, well let's just wait and hope; or the evidence is unclear, so we should do nothing.
I think that's an awful mistake. By the time we realize we were wrong it will be too late to react.
We should do the best science we can, and make the best decision we can taking in all the available evidence, and cost vs benefit.

Re:Paren't point

[ceoyoyo]

"It may be absolutely true that global climate models predict large amounts of sea level rise, but there is no actual evidence in the form of large rises in sea level to support this"

I don't recall anyone saying there is. The IPCC is talking about scenarios that seem most likely, given what we think we know about how the planet works. We can wait and see, making observations to see if the models are correct, or we can start to think about what we're going to do if they are correct.

Personally, as a medial researcher, I like to try it and see what happens, but the patients usually prefer we have some theoretical justification and do most of our experimenting in animals (imperfect models) first. In terms of altering global climate I can see how the experimental approach might also have a few issues.

Re:Paren't point

[rgbatduke]

I don't argue with most of this. A few points:

a) Global temperatures have largely levelled off over the last 16 years. Yes, this is also looking at the end of a time series, but over that time global CO_2 levels have risen dramatically. The lower troposphere temperature, as one of the few truly global indicators, is simply not showing the sort of growth it did over the first 17 years, and most of that growth is associated with a single discrete event -- the 1998 El Nino. Sea surface temperatures follow this trend even more directly, being nearly flat on both sides of the El Nino. It is also very, very difficult to separate out the CO_2 derived "warming signal" from the natural rise in temperature the planet has experienced after the little ice age, almost all of which had nothing to do with CO_2. The evidence that CO_2 forced warming is associated with a high climate sensitivity is weak already and weakening further. I do not know what sort of confidence one should place in high sensitivity predictions -- there isn't even good agreement among climate scientists or climate models, and the uncertainty is well-represented in the AR working group reports, just not in their summary for policy makers.

b) The only way to test climate models is to wait for decades and compare them to actual data. This is a test they have not done particularly well with over the last 16 years. In the meantime, one has to assign a lot less confidence to their predictions than is commonly done, given that they are trying to solve what is literally the most difficult problem in computational physics in the world, out to truly absurd future times. Their ability to hindcast and e.g. explain the last 1000 years of climate data is essentially nil. I personally just think that we don't yet know the right physics, or perhaps we do know the basic physics itself but that the complexity of the model is not yet computable. Tiny errors in a highly multivariate nonlinear system can have profound effects the further away you go. I also don't have a lot of confidence in various input assumptions -- not when they are applied to the geological data over long time spans. I think it will take as long as the rest of the century just to get the physics right, and if we were LUCKY we might get it mostly right in 20-30 more years of satellite data (the only data I have a lot of confidence in -- too many thumbs on too many scales in the thermometric record, as evidenced by the increasing divergence between reported land surface temperatures and LT and SS temperatures.

c) We know ice is forming as well as melting. Total sea ice isn't even changing a whole lot, and again it went through a very similar cycle back in the 30's, without CO_2. We simply don't have enough observational data to tell whether what is happening is mostly normal. And nearly all of the observed SLR is from the normal thermal expansion of seawater, and is not happening at an alarming rate.

But the main point is that I completely agree that we need to look carefully at cost vs benefit, based on the actual evidence and not unproven models. The actual evidence does not support drastic and expensive action, it supports research into alternative energy resources that might -- when mature in a decade or three -- be able to reduce the consumption of carbon based energy without causing a worldwide energy depression worse than the problem it seeks to "cure". There is a substantial human cost to most of the steps being taken now to "ameliorate" the problem. In fact, they form a real-time "catastrophe" of their own, one definitely affecting the world right now, not in 80 years, maybe. Every day of energy poverty in the third world is another day of misery, and like it or not, carbon-based energy is cheap and plentiful compared to the currently available alternatives.

Then there is the politics of it all. Nuclear power, for example, could substantially reduce our reliance on coal using well

Re:How do you model such a complicated system?

[tolkienfan]

Just because YOU are ignorant of the methods and the available accuracy doesn't mean everyone is.
What's your preference, ignore the possibility that we could be destroying our world because predicting the future is difficult?
Yeah, good plan.

Re:How surprising...

[h4rr4r]

Acid rain we avoided with a cap and trade system on sulfer dioxides. Much like what they want to do with CO2 since it is already proven to work.

This is a real problem these days, if we solve any issue before the break down of society we get a bunch of ill informed mouth breathers beating their chests claiming there never was an issue.

Re:How do you model such a complicated system?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you model such a complicated system?

In principle it can be modelled analytically, if we knew enough to do so. We don't yet though. Our GCMs don't come even close to modelling the historical record with statistical significance. At best they roughly mirror some short-term variations like 100ky cycles and a general increase or decrease in some metrics with the help of fudge factors, but never across multiple geological periods.

The only people expressing confidence about our predictive ability in climatology based on physical modeling are those who hold the scientific method in less esteem than their own reading of tea leaves. We can graph trends of course and extrapolate along them, but that is unrelated to scientific understanding.

We'll get there one day. For now though, beware of shamen wearing the clothes of scientists. If the scientific method isn't being respected, you can guarantee that science is taking a back seat to something less objective.

But don't lose hope. And in the interim, look after our one and only habitable planet. Just because science isn't able to model it accurately yet doesn't mean that it's OK to pollute it. Commonsense applies.

Re:How do you model such a complicated system?

[Capt James McCarthy]

Just because YOU are ignorant of the methods and the available accuracy doesn't mean everyone is.
What's your preference, ignore the possibility that we could be destroying our world because predicting the future is difficult?
Yeah, good plan.

I don't think humans will be destroying the world. The world will remove humans from the equation and it will be fine moving forward. It's done it many times before, so there is little to doubt that it will do it again. Now don't jump on this as though I'm not saying to do anything, or that humans have an affect on the environment, because we do. Just like any other living thing, we have an impact on our surroundings. Resources are limited, every living thing takes resources. Some take from other living things.

Finding the magical balance with the Earth and humans will be a tough one to solve. Throw in the 'natural' ebb and flow of the weather and it's even more complicated. The question will be is how good humans really are at adapting to changes in the environment. We will always have an affect on it.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[hey!]

Baloney. It's the political hacks who pounce on something like this and say "Look! The scientists revised their consensus predictions, *obviously* it's just politics because the truth never changes." They say this because politics is the only thing they (think) they understand. It's just as silly as when they get up on their high horses about "revisionist" historians -- revising history is what *actual* historians do. Revising climate predictions is what climatologists do, and in any case the rumors of what the new IPCC (you like them now?) forecasts will contain is well within the range that's been discussed all along, except for a somewhat more pessimistic sea level rise figure. If you'd actually been paying attention to science news instead of political pundits, you'd know that the recent buzz has been the remarkable accuracy of the original 1990 IPCC report (source: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1763.html). This is a remarkable piece of support for the anthropogenic hypothesis, since the computer models used in the late 80s relied heavily on atmospheric CO2 accumulation.

The only reason people like you think climate change is politically driven myth is because you weren't paying attention *before* it became a political issue. It was vigorously debated in the scientific literature well before it became a political hot potato -- check the abstracts on Google Scholar if you don't believe me. Now you can pooh pooh a 2 degree rise in global average temperature and 1 m rise in sea level, but that's because you have no idea what the effects of those changes will be. A 1m mean sea level rise means substantially more frequent flooding events. A 2 degree temperature rise has a huge effect on the distribution of vector borne diseases.

It sounds benign to say that there will be "new arid zones in the Southern United States", but only if you don't think about what the appearance of a new arid zone would mean.

Re:ENOUGH ALREADY !! CAN'T DO SHIT ABOUT IT ANYWAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sit back and chill !! You can't do anything about it !! NO !! You CAN'T !!

Not as long as the disinformation campaign is running in the USA, no.

That disinformation campaign wouldn't work if not for the alarmist Chicken Littles all going over-the-top batshit crazy with their alarmism and ruining the credibility of anyone trying to speak calmly about climate change.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[lordholm]

IPCC being a body with representation from different states (with a lot of political interest in the reports), that more or less work with consensus, their reports are often watered down when released. This means that the published science is often more pessimistic than the IPCC report.

Re:I still don't get it...

[FriendlyLurker]

Talking of stupid, anybody who takes this IPCC "draft" trolling seriously are being duped. The IPCC are climate change deniers, hiding behind a thin veil that can hardly be called "science"

The end game of the massive well funded disinformation campaign being to influence as many people as possible into taking strong climate change denial opinion. The problem is, the likes of Fox news and troll news like this one are succeeding very well in this aim, http://environment.yale.edu/climate/the-climate-note/>as this graph shows. Science and evidence be damned.

IPCC Disinformation campaign:

The slide above comes from the presentation of Hans von Storch to the InterAcademy Review of the IPCC, presented earlier this week in Montreal. The slide references the misrepresentation of the issue of disasters and climate change by the IPCC. von Storch is very clear in his views:

IPCC authors have decided to violate the mission of the IPCC, by presenting disinformation.

Not only did the IPCC misrepresent the science of disasters and climate change, but went so far as to issue a highly misleading press release to try to spin the issue and put an unprepared IPCC WG2 chair on the BBC to try to defend the undefensible. I was promised a response from the IPCC to my concerns, a response that has never been provided.

A former head of the IPCC, Robert Watson, says the following in the context of the 2035 glacier issue, but could be equally applied to the disaster issue:

To me the fundamental problem was that when the error was found it was handled in a totally and utterly atrocious manner.

The IAC Review of the IPCC is fully aware of this issue, and it will be interesting to see what their report says on the topic. Meantime, the IPCC is continuing its preparations for its next assessment in business-as-usual fashion.

Re:I still don't get it...

[Grizzley9]

Global warming doesn't care whether you believe in it.

Stop anthropomorphizing Global Warming. It doesn't like that.

Re:How surprising...

[nedlohs]

Maybe you didn't get your science information from the news which as you state likes alarmist predictions you'd have a better understanding of what scientists have actually been saying about all those things for all those years?

Re:How surprising...

[apcullen]

Acid Rain was moderated with a cap and trade, not avoided. Anyone with a swimming pool in the northeast will tell you they have to correct the ph of their pool every time it rains.

Re:I still don't get it...

[blindseer]

I believe that whether or not AGW is true the response should be the same. More nuclear and natural gas. Less ethanol and foreign sourced oil. Drop the stupid subsidies on windmills, solar panels, and electric cars.

Electric cars are now a mature technology. We no longer need to subsidize them since people are buying top dollar electric cars anyway. Electric car subsidies are just the wealthy legislating more more to the wealthy so they can by their status symbols. Also, until we replace coal power with nuclear these cars produce more carbon than a gasoline, diesel, or especially natural gas counterpart.

Windmills rarely produce a net carbon savings because they are still backed up by inefficient natural gas turbines or, the largest culprit of carbon output, coal.

End this insanity with CFL bulbs. I don't like the idea of having fragile, mercury filled, glass tubes hanging over where I eat and sleep. If we had nuclear instead of coal it would not matter what kind of lighting I chose when it comes to carbon output.

If we cannot figure out whether or not ethanol actually saves on carbon or not then perhaps we should not be dumping so much money into it. If people want ethanol then let them have it, just don't make me buy it so you can feel better about yourself. Like the CFL bulb example above this would all be moot if we could get some natural gas and electric (from nuclear) vehicles on the road.

The nice thing about all of this is that it involves reducing government influence on our lives, increases the choices of the consumer, lower taxes, greater wealth for all, and no painful transitions in infrastructure. This is also precisely why it will not happen. AGW is about bigger government, not saving the world.

Re:How surprising...

[the eric conspiracy]

Actually peak oil has happened. Why do you think you are paying $4 for gas, and we are drilling EVERYWHERE for the last dregs, not to mention trying to process tar sands. And why do you think economic growth worldwide sucks? Why do you think global oil production is in a downtrend?

1960's big freeze - I call bullshit. There was never a scientific consensus that this would happen.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

1970's - Ozone layer was preserved because of a concerted global response to remove the cause of it's shrinkage. Duh.

1980's - Aids has killed 15 million people. Go talk to people living in countries where it is pandemic and then come back and tell me nothing has happened.

http://www.avert.org/aids-impact-africa.htm

2003 - SARS. Please cite a claim that it was going to wipe us all out.

2005 - Avian Flu - ditto

2012 - Oh BS.

Alarmist predictions are made alarmist by news reporters. The actual predictions have been pretty much accurate.

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-pair-global.html

Re:How do you model such a complicated system?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Actually your assessment is quite good, except it would be applicable to the 1970's. Modern Earth system models are FAR more sophisticated and capable than you are stating. They respond in quite realistic ways to different forcings, reproduce both recent historical temperatures and paleoclimate. They are also virtually entirely physical, containing no 'fudge factors', just basic physics. There are plenty of things that aren't accurately measured and a few significant things that are only partially understood, but when we plug in various different models of those things (say clouds for instance) we can constrain the range of what these unknowns could possibly be hiding. It isn't much. One of the most remarkable facts about climate models is just how consistently they have produced quite similar overall results and how HARD it is to get them to produce really unrealistic results. Even the most grossly simplistic models usually demonstrate significant correspondence with reality. The main area of uncertainty, and one that may possibly be irreducible, are small scale regional predictions. Climate can have a lot of different similar states. It is perhaps impossible even with virtually infinite computer power to predict what the rainfall will be in New England around 2050. The answers you will get in each model run with slightly randomized initial state will vary somewhat. Interestingly though the GLOBAL results are generally rock solid consistent. Chances are this is just a feature of the real world, tiny effects WILL make a local difference, but the overall state of the whole system is constrained by basic conservation laws, so that the large scale predictions are highly accurate (and have generally been shown to be so). Truthfully we may be approaching the limit of what we can usefully do in terms of prediction.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[TapeCutter]

The source is FF lobbyists, TFA is a A grade bullshit, the author has a track record. The usual suspects in opinion columns around the world will all point to it (or more commonly each other) for the next year. When the report is published they will either ignore the fact they were wrong or insist it was a in "a draft"

The very notion of a secret draft plays into peoples biases, it also depends on people's ignorance of basic facts. Some easily verifiable facts:
The IPCC conducts it's business in the open and are more than happy to respond to a layman who spots a trivial typo in a draft (as I did circa 2001).
They're expecting ~100K review comments this time around.
The thousands of scientists and others involved do not get a dime from the IPCC, all work is donated (aside from 3-4 permanent office staff).
The IPCC's accounts can also be found via that link.
Their $5-6M annual budget comes from donations by the governments of over 100 countries of all political stripes. Somewhat ironically the bulk of it is spent on airline tickets..

The political construct is unraveling

The headline hit the nail on the head, but I'm pretty sure it's not the nail the GP was aiming at.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[gr8_phk]

The only reason people like you think climate change is politically driven myth is because you weren't paying attention *before* it became a political issue.

Nope. The political angle has been apparent for quite some time - I figured it was an attempt to stop the developing world from advancing. Say to prevent China and India from becoming the dominant players on the world stage. But prior to the politicization there were the ever conflicting reports just like we see today:

sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century, but past dire warnings of stronger storms or more frequent droughts won't pan out.

Remember the record hurricane season that was going to be the new norm due to climate change? How about the collapse of the ice shelves in Antarctica that later later started growing - oh, melting will be at the north pole and MORE ice will form at the south. I recall in the 1970's when we were all headed to the next ice age - the computer models all kept falling into something called "white earth" and never warmed up again. At least that is more consistent with the ice cores (looks like we're due for glaciation to start within 1000 years). One of the reasons people are skeptical or even deniers is all this bullshit that they can't get the models and prediction straight. If you keep changing your story, people won't believe you. It's that simple.

Re:How surprising...

[Jason Levine]

The same thing happened with Y2K. A lot of people worked very hard to prevent a giant mess and were successful. Since a catastrophe didn't happen, people assume it was all hype and no substance. Would it have ended civilization as we know it? No. Would it have led to a period of great chaos which could have sent the economy reeling (the markets hate chaos)? Yes.

If you work hard enough at averting a crisis, you inevitably get people who second guess whether your efforts averted the crisis or whether the crisis averted itself and you're just trying to claim credit.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall in the 1970's when we were all headed to the next ice age - the computer models all kept falling into something called "white earth" and never warmed up again.

An article in Newsweek written by a scientifically-illiterate journalist is not the same as a peer-reviewed article written by an actual scientist working in the field. As to the rest of your nonsense, you do realize that science works by "changing the story" all the time? I guess by your "reasoning" gravity doesn't exist either since we have more refined models than Newtonian gravitational theory.

Re:Younger Dryas

[Geoffrey.landis]

This article doesn't seem to address what I have been told was the actual greatest danger of global warming, a Northern Hemisphere Ice age.

That's because this has been pretty much shown to be an unlikely scenario.

The media loves it, of course, because "New York buried under a hundred meters of ice!" is a lot more exciting than "the world warms up slightly over the course of a century," and the media thrives on excitement. But it's hard to find a climate scientist these days who thinks that this is a very realistic possibility.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[rhsanborn]

Perhaps you recall the media making a big deal of global cooling, but the scientific community was not. The story isn't changing nearly so much as people say it is. Popular media is doing a hell of a job of making it sound like this is a controversy. It isn't. There is a great graphic here. Source

Climate skeptics have played the media and the general populace like a fiddle. They point to the relatively small number of scientists who speculated on global cooling, and then say, "they can't make up their minds". They pick the .02% of papers speculating that global warming doesn't exist and call it a "controversy".

No ice age [Re:The political construct...]

[Geoffrey.landis]

The only reason people like you think climate change is politically driven myth is because you weren't paying attention *before* it became a political issue.

Nope. The political angle has been apparent for quite some time - I figured it was an attempt to stop the developing world from advancing. Say to prevent China and India from becoming the dominant players on the world stage.

So, to be clear: you believe that Manabe and Wetherald's landmark 1967 paper (which built on Manabe and Strickler 1964) that calculated the amount of warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses, was work that was actually done "to prevent China and India from becoming the dominant players on the world stage"? Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever? Can you find some 1964 references saying that politicians were seriously worried about "China and India becoming the dominant players on the world stage," much less were instructing scientists to make up data to prevent it?

... I recall in the 1970's when we were all headed to the next ice age - the computer models all kept falling into something called "white earth" and never warmed up again.

That's been debunked ages ago. The "next ice age" played well in the media-- it made Time and Newsweek--but it was never a scientific consensus. Check out "The myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus" in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1 , or the discussion and links here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/09/18/now-out-in-bams-the-myth-of-th/

...One of the reasons people are skeptical or even deniers is all this bullshit that they can't get the models and prediction straight. If you keep changing your story, people won't believe you. It's that simple.

Sorry, but this is the way science happens: the overall physics is understood, and then the details are slowly filled and the error bars are refined and the calculations get better.

Let me remind you that the overall physics of the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had been remarkably constant. Today's best estimate of the warming effect is still within the error bars of Manabe and Wetherald's original 1967 calculation, and if you plot their predictions against the actual measured temperatures, using the measured values of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the data fits perfectly.

We have pretty good confidence that we know the physics of the greenhouse effect. Scientists has not been "keeping changing your story"-- it's been physics that's been well understood for over a hundred years, and the same overall calculation with the same net result, to within the error bars, for close to fifty years.

Re:No ice age [Re:The political construct...]

[Black Parrot]

...One of the reasons people are skeptical or even deniers is all this bullshit that they can't get the models and prediction straight. If you keep changing your story, people won't believe you. It's that simple.

Sorry, but this is the way science happens: the overall physics is understood, and then the details are slowly filled and the error bars are refined and the calculations get better.

It's a terrible, terrible thing when scientists try to improve their predictions. They should just make something up and stick to it in the face of all countering evidence, like cranks do.

I'm sure the GP poster will be reassured to learn that creationists also recognize the validity of this argument. Great minds think alike, and all that.

We have pretty good confidence that we know the physics of the greenhouse effect.

We can even measure the earth's reduced thermal radiation at the frequencies absorbed by greenhouse gasses, compared to when measurements were first made around 1970. See this article, second plot from the top.

Re:I still don't get it...

[Spectre]

How did real estate in Florida ever get so overpriced in the run up to 2008, if anyone out there is taking rising sea levels seriously?

Because people are stupid. Why else would they build where there are tornados regularly. Hey, this place gets plenty of earth quakes, what a great place to put a city...

One day San Francisco is going to bobbing about in the Pacific and everyone will be surprised it happened

Keep in mind ... there are NO places in the USA where tornadoes occur regularly. Take Kansas (where I grew up), it is in "Tornado Alley". Ooh, dangerous! Not really. There's dozens of tornadoes per year in the state, but tornadoes have a pretty small damage path, usually only a few square miles. Let's say it is an absolutely horrible year, though, and there are 100 tornadoes with an average damage path of 20 square miles, that would be 2000 square miles of damage. Kansas is ~82,000 square miles in size, though. So even in a year far worse than has happened in recorded history, as a Kansas resident for a worst case year you are 40 times more likely to be unaffected by a tornado than you are to be affected.

The downside is, damage from a tornado if you are directly in the damage path tends to be absolute. Grass and foundations tend to be the only items left intact.

Re:How surprising...

[Ost99]

Nice anti-science rant.

What I expect a scientist NOT to do is scaremongering like:

1950's Peak oil; no more oil in 1970... never happened

Peak oil doesn't mean no more oil.
And peak oil happened in the 1970s; for US production.
BTW which definition of peak oil are you referring to?
1) Maximum oil production has been attained, and it will decrease from now
2) Demand for oil surpasses production
or
3) Rate of new discoveries fall below rate of consumption?

both 2 and 3 happened in the 1970s, but only temporary

1960's Big freeze; a new ice age was about to start (because of constantly FALLING global temperatures)... nothing happened

New ice age? We're still in an ice age.

1970`s Acid rain will wipe us all out by 1985... never happened

Human extinction was never suggested as a possible outcome of acid rain. Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.

1970's Overpopulation will lead to famines and mass extinction of humans... nothing happened

Overpopulation has caused famine and mass death of humans in Africa every year since 1970.

1970's The ozone layer will disappear. CFC's were banned; the ozone layer is still growing... nothing spectacular happened

Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.

1980's AIDS will wipe all the gay's out... later replaced by 'will wipe us all out'... nothing happened

Nothing happened? Infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa are approaching 10% in several countries; with rates approaching 50% of the adult population in some areas.

2000's Peak Oil; no more oil in 2020... bit early to tell... but I have a hunch

Yeah, nothing will happen. Oil will still cost $20 a barrel just like in 1999. It's obvious we'll never run out.
Global increase in crude oil production has been 0.5% from 2000-2011, and prices have increased from $20 to $90, with peaks close to $150.

Get a 'shopping bag for life' and a 'special light bulb' if you really believe that it will make a difference, but leave me in peace please.

When you have a planet to yourself, you can do what you like. As long as you're sharing with the rest of us, you'd better learn to behave responsibly.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[V for Vendetta]

I recall in the 1970's when we were all headed to the next ice age - the computer models all kept falling into something called "white earth" and never warmed up again.

Here's a good and insighful read of the author of the study that became media's "next ice age" in the 1970s has to say about it: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_7.html#schneider

He ends with:

Ironically, inside the scientific world, this switch of sign of projected effects is viewed as precisely what responsible scientists must do when the facts change. Not only did I change my mind, but published almost immediately what had changed and how that played out over time. Scientists have no crystal ball, but we do have modeling methods that are the closest approximation available. They can't give us truth, but they can tell us the logical consequences of explicit assumptions. Those who update their conclusions explicitly as facts evolve are much more likely to be a credible source than those who stick to old stories for political consistency. Two cheers for the scientific method!

Re:I still don't get it...

[spmkk]

So, in other words, data about climate change is only legitimate if it points to dire straits. Got it.

Question for you and other CC hardliners: How is it that any claim of political play in AGW promotion is dismissed as right-wing hyperbole, but doggedly insisting that ANY climate data that casts doubt on the World-Will-End-In-Hellfire hypothesis is politically driven is somehow valid?

Re:I'm detecting a trend...

[Black Parrot]

Seriously, all you highly intelligent motivated reasoning alarmists out there, the biggest damage that was ever done to your position was the wild exaggeration and apocalyptic doom mongering. Yes, it has been fairly pointed out that there is a contingent of skeptics who scare monger about the "New World Order", and the UN controlling everyone, but that trope hasn't benefitted the CAGW crowd nearly as much as they've been harmed by their own end of the world rhetoric.

Funny, I hear a lot less end-of-the-world rhetoric than I hear accusations of end-of-the-world rhetoric.

Also, the biggest damage to widespread knowledge of the truth wasn't done by alarmism, but by shills for Big Oil writing opinion pieces in influential newspapers and magazines.

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[Purpendicular]

No one that appeals to "consensus" has any scientific credibility. "On the word of no one", Nullius in verba, used to be the motto of the Royal Society. It is well hidden these days. It is not featured on the home page. In the 19th century, the Royal Society received money from the British government. This created such a scandal that any further government funding was refused. It was judged scandalous that scientist could depend on government funding. This was during laissez-faire. The British government then bankrupted the universities during the First World War (they had their savings in government bonds). These days, the Royal Society is a stooge of British politicians. Since they are the ones paying. Darwin was a hobby scientist. He was not peer reviewed. He did not work at a university. He did not publish papers. He wrote books. Followingen the IPCC logic, I should have answered that "oh, but the whole physics department agrees with my statement" during the defence of my thesis...

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[Ferzerp]

3mm/yr * 100 yrs = 0.3m

The math you have performed for the numbers that you have presented is off by a factor of 10.

Re:Considering how wrong they've been in the past

[Troed]

Andrew, Katrina and Sandy were just ordinary weather

Yes.

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/cei/step6.ytd.gif

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg

Re:The political construct is unraveling

[hey!]

One of the reasons people are skeptical or even deniers is all this bullshit that they can't get the models and prediction straight. If you keep changing your story, people won't believe you. It's that simple.

If you don't change your story when data challenges it, you're not doing science. It's that simple.

I understand that "people" (by which *I* mean "some people") are easier to convince if you never change what you say no matter what new evidence comes up. That's because they don't understand the difference between changing your story purely for the effect it has on the listener, and changing your story because you've learned something new. In other words, the "people" you are citing can't tell the difference between dishonesty and honesty. Let's take Antarctic sea ice as an example. "People" may take scientists honest admission that seasonal sea ice is increasing as a sign of dishonesty, but it's a peculiar conspiracy that raises and publishes doubts about itself.

In any even the Antarctic ice kerfuffle turned out not to be related to lowered temperatures at all, but more energetic winds driving the sea ice beyond regions in which it formed.

Re:I still don't get it...

[blindseer]

Sure, LED lighting is a solution. The point is that I don't want the government telling me what lights I should buy. I most definitely don't want the government spending my tax money on subsidizing CFL bulbs for other people to buy. If these people want to feel better about themselves for "saving the planet" by buying a CFL bulb then they can do that with their own money.

I'll probably end up getting some LED bulbs in the future but for right now I enjoy the extra heat they provide during this cold weather.

Re:I still don't get it...

[blindseer]

My so called "pissing on others' yards" is the fault of the government. They are the ones not letting people build more nuclear power plants. If we replace all these coal plants with nuclear ones we would put a very significant dent in the carbon output we produce.

CFL bulbs are a band-aid on a gun shot wound. Electricity is used for many things other than lighting. If we put our efforts in building nuclear power plants then ALL electricity use gains. Electric cars are one example. Getting an electric car does not "save the planet" if we're burning coal to charge them up. Electric cars only make sense if the electricity comes from an energy source that has less carbon output than an equivalent gasoline or diesel car would.

For the record, I am for heavily taxing incandescent bulbs rather than banning them.

That's a distinction without a difference. The government would still be doing nothing about the real problem, carbon output from coal fired electric power plants. Replace those coal plants with nuclear and the light bulbs I buy should not matter to anyone.

Re:How surprising...

[Rockoon]

But I'm sure you have a better approach?

Yes, my approach is to not to label things that havent been tested as 'ever more accurate.'

But hey... what do I know.. its not like their lack of honesty isnt the reason that I distrust these fucks.