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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.'"
I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!
For once, there may be a thread on this site that avoids tangenting off into politics. It will be refreshing to witness a debate that does not invoke Nazis, gun control, or the results of previous US elections, because those are totally offtopic and everyone will realize that.
Two mistakes pop up immediately int the article - IPPC (eh? OK, typo) and "The Journal of the American Meteorological Society". It's IPCC and the Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS). Maybe this guy creamed himself while typing, it is the WSJ after all.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
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
The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately". It should thus not come as a big shock when what the computer models predicted in 2007 doesn't happen exactly in 2013, or indeed further down the timeline. It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.----- And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins. ------ So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I'm finding it hard to see what the change is here.
The old number was that the doubling sensitivity was most likely to be in the range 2 C-to-4.5 C. Specifically:
"we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2C to 4.5C, with a most likely value of about 3C."
(reference: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html#box-10-2 )
This report-- if the leaked version is accurate-- is that it's "'likely' to be above 1.5 degrees C, 'very likely' to be below 6 degrees C".
That's not a "reduction" or a "retreat"-- it is, at best, a slightly higher range. But since, as the summary says, "Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.," I don't see that there's any clear change at all-- just different wording.
This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
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
Why is it with climate change, we always end up talking about Al Gore?
Imply all the sinister things you want about Gore. He's in it for the money? Sure. He's a hypocrite? Okay! He's lying? Hey, he's a politician and his lips are moving. He's just doing it for a carbon credit scheme? I believe it totally. In fact, I'm just going to go ahead and say that Al Gore is literally the devil. Everything bad you could say about him, I accept as truth.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way... why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?