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Dialing Back the Alarm On Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes "A leaked copy of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made the rounds and the good news is that the predicted temperature rise expected as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than predicted in 2007. From the article: 'Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet. Specifically, the draft report says that "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), "likely" to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.'"
Given the inertia of our industrial and economic processes, it only means that the unstoppable iceberg will simply crawl slower. But at least we have more time. I also don't think that this means a time-out for ocean acidification.
Ezekiel 23:20
I remember in second grade ca 1974 my teacher explaining that the Earth were slowly heading into a new ice age. If I ever meet him again I'll buy him a beer!
Except that was a fringe idea that was obliterated in peer review fairly quickly. But people for some reason tend to fixate the weirdest shit in their memories, instead of the actually useful stuff.
Ezekiel 23:20
Just a few days ago, there was a story how the ice in the arctic "rebounded" 60%.
The real story is in this graph:
http://postimg.org/image/hcadakghv/
We've been measuring arctic ice the late 70s. It's at it's maximum in March, melts during the summer, and sees it's minimum in September. 2012 was the record year we had so far for the LEAST amount of artic ice. 2007 has second place and 2011 has 3rd. This year we have more than 2012. This was expected among scientists because of something called regression towards the mean. That concept basically says when an extreme outlier event occurs, we expect the next event to be closer to the average. Basically, the entire hoopla is about playing math games to appear more impressive than it is.
When the story came out, it was premature the typical September lowpoint, so don't expect the 60% figure to quite hold that high, but it is higher than last year none the less. However, you can see it's still well below 00s average and that every decade has since the measurements started have less and less ice.
So there you have it? Maybe the heat is going into the oceans? Then melting the poles as the currents do a good job of distributing the equator heat around via currents. The ice melts, breaks off whatever, and like icecubes in a warm drink, cool it down.... until there is no ice left?
Come on, what is with the propraganda here? Last year was an obsolute low point in Arctic Ice extent.... and we get stories of so called "rebounds"? Just look at the graph and tell me that it trend isn't clear.
It's not a bad thing, per se.
However, it does feed the idea that the alarmism was trumped up for that purpose in the first place, a suspicion that many have had over the years. If too many people, scientist or not, subscribe to this "ends justifies the means" rationalization (instead of just saying that they were mistaken), that is not going to foster public trust in the scientific community.
The author of this article, Matt Ridley, is a known climate change denialist and of course the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and therefore operates under the same umbrella as Fox News.
Supposed leaks from the IPCC document have already been mischaracterized in the right-wing media. See, for example, Phil Plait's demolition of them here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/10/climate_change_sea_ice_global_cooling_and_other_nonsense.html
Or if you prefer your demolition in video format:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH5D9P6KYfY
I have no reason to trust the right-wing's interpretation of the IPCC document before it is officially announced and I can check it for myself. Why don't you try WAITING for it to be released before you start spreading this very likely BS.
1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit)
1.5 degrees Celsius is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Conversion
A quick check of the authors credentials indicates he wrote a book some years ago expounding the view that climate change will be beneficial for humanity. The WSJ article is the author promoting his own ideas under the guise of interpreting the results of the next IPCC report for us (rather than letting us interpret the results for ourselves).
"Also, the inconvenient truth was largely accurate: http://www.skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors.htm"
Skeptical Science is hardly an unbiased source. Lots of other sources have some rather scathing things to say about "Inconvenient Truth".
Skeptical Science is a propaganda machine. They adopted the "skeptical" monitor in order to try to infiltrate the actual skeptics.
Just sayin'... I'm not claiming they're wrong but like any other obviously biased source, any true skeptic is obligated to take their word with a large grain of salt.
Look, the human body is a massively complex thing, but we can still say that calorines in > calories spent it = weight gain.
The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.
In other words, models are based on one scenario, and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The oceans weigh 280 times as much as the atmosphere, so it's nice to see it start to be included in the climate models.
Did you post this in 1990 and it took until now to get published?
Oceans are included in GCM models. They have been for some time now.
Never before seen? Ever? What about during the Cambrian period? CO2 levels 18 times as high as they are today.
In fact - this may come as a shock to you - we are currently at one of the low points for CO2 levels in Earths history. Not just low, but VERY low.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
When you begin to get into decent shape, you lose inches but actually GAIN weight, because muscle is 3 x as dense as fat.
It might be interesting to figure out where that silly claim originated. A quick check finds a number of sites online claiming that actual measurements (imagine that ;-) find mammalian skeletal muscles to have a density of about 1.06, and mammalian fat has a density of about 0.9. A quick division turns up a ration of 1.18 between those, nowhere near 3.
If you want people to believe you, you really shouldn't use numbers that can be debunked by measurements that can be done fairly easily in any well-equipped kitchen with a few chunks of meat and fat that you can get at your local grocery stores. Yes, you can vary the results a bit, e.g. by cooking the fat out of the meat and the water out of the fat, but you won't get anywhere near a ratio of 3 for their density.
And "dense" isn't a difficult concept. Density is measured in grams per cc. Your kitchen scale can measure the grams, and the water-displacement method popularized by that ancient Greek guy is a very easy way to measure volume of oddly-shaped chunks, if you have a largish measuring cup. This is good enough to get 2-significant-digit measurements, or 3 if you have good tools and are more careful.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I would hardly call it "public service", since there are parts that are provably untrue.
For example, the IPCC didn't present a giant chart of two trends that had an approximately 300-year time differential, and "conveniently" forget to properly label the the axes.
See what I mean.