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IPCC's "Darkest Yet" Climate Report Warns of Food, Water Shortages
The Australian reports that "UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed.
A draft of their report, seen by the news organisation AFP, is part of a massive overview by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, likely to shape policies and climate talks for years to come.
Scientists and government representatives will meet in Yokohama, Japan, from tomorrow to hammer out a 29-page summary. It will be unveiled with the full report on March 31.
'We have a lot clearer picture of impacts and their consequences ... including the implications for security,' said Chris Field of the US’s Carnegie Institution, who headed the probe.
The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that humans caused global warming. It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much."
The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that humans caused global warming. It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much."
At this point, the IPCC is looking more like bad disaster fiction.
Plants will require a lot of additional water in warmer climates. You can actually bake the plants in too warm of a climate. A warmer climate means more evaporation of standing water, especially bad in places that don't get heavy rain fall. Not so much scare tactics, but I would take it with a grain of salt; However much easier to believe if you've actually taken the time to record your weather, I live in a place that is normally very very wet and it's been just far too dry the past 2-3 years and this year is aiming to be more dry than last years.
The droughts in California ARE man-made, but they have nothing to do with the Global Warming boogy-man and have everything to do with 2 important facts that people seem to forget:
1. That part of California is a freakin' desert and no, it didn't turn into a desert overnight because of Global Warming, it was a desert long before humans showed up.
2. California's intentional man-made mismanagement of its water supply to dump water for bait-fish and for Mexico and refusal to build new reservoirs to store water from years when it has been plentiful has caught up to it now that we see California's climate doing exactly what it should be doing.
But go ahead, blame Global Warming and burn a few witches at the stake since radical religious fanaticism with a thin veneer of "science" painted over it has now replaced rational thought.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
About a decade ago.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That's precisely the problem. The warming isn't going to cause much of a problem for most people old enough to post here. By the time the problems get too bad to ignore, we're already committed to even more problems, because the excess carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That's why we keep getting these warnings, so we can avoid those problems before it's too late.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Much of the global warming skepticism has been fueled lately by the decade long pause in the global warming average. It seems what I can gather from this is while many areas are hotter than they were previously, other places are somewhat cooler, so it balances out.
Some of the skepticism does exhibit a recency bias, by simply ignoring everything prior to year 2000 or so. In a chart of temperatures during the past 100 years, the current pause does look rather insignificant and could be simply a temporary pause rather than a change in the trajectory. They have problems explaining away the previous 50 years of temperature increase.
The trouble is that the rate that we are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere far exceeds the rate at which plants can absorb it.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The first link points out how there is a limit to CO2 helping plant growth - but does nothing to argue against some areas being warmer producing more food, nor does it argue at all against plants doing mildly better with more CO2. It argues against levels of CO2 that are not possible harming plants.
The second link ins something about animals having issues adapting which is irrelevant to talking about plant life and mild warming.
The last link is just more stuff about extreme weather already debunked by actual weather events we are having.
The problem you have when you parrot other people's ideas is that you can't effectively argue when those arguments fall out of date or or otherwise debunked (summary: we have to have more extreme weather events before you can claim warming causes them, instead of just asserting they will happen).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please pick up "Six Degrees" and read it.
You are woefully ill-informed if you believe 5C simply "sounds like a lot" but "local variations are far greater". The effects of Climate Change due to Global Warming are not limited to it being just a little warmer. 5C will make things very difficult.
To your point, you need to separate the purported propaganda of us reaching a 5C increase by 2100 vs. the effects of a 5C increase. Yes indeed it is one thing to go on and on about the effects of full scale nuclear war (or a catastrophic asteroid strike, Yellowstone erupting, or whatever) while ignoring the related probability of such an event. But it's foolish to debate the effect rather than said likelihood. These are separate issues/debates. Documenting what has happened in the past at certain temps is probably quite a bit more "settled" than predicting things for the rest of the century.
Depends on where you live.
Just as you should not confuse weather with climate, you should not confuse *regional* climate with *global* climate. The Medieval "Warm" Period refers to the temperatures in European climate. High temperatures around the North Atlantic were offset by anomalously cool temperatures elsewhere. In contrast average temperatures have been anomalously high in every region of the globe in the last decade or so.
In other words, we are experiencing *global* warming now, but had *regional* warming in the MWP.
Even withglobal warming your neck of the woods may experience instances of anomalously cool weather. Under more extreme global warming levels, where you live might even experience regional *cooling*, due to disruptions in the transfer of energy from low to high latitudes -- although that is still hypothetical at this point. At present nearly the entire planet has been experiencing higher average temperatures.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Gees, where did you get your Bio degree from? No, that not true for the majority of plants (carbon is rarely the limiting growth factor). If anything, plants become lazier as a result of high CO2 by making fewer pores for air exchange. Moreover, it's not plants but microorganisms in the ocean that produce roughly 85% of our oxygen.
Did you know that plants have mitochondria too? The way plants work is they store energy using chloroplasts during the day and expend it at night for growing. It'd be much safer for you to say that plants are carbon neutral instead of carbon negative.
That's precisely the problem. The warming isn't going to cause much of a problem for most people old enough to post here. By the time the problems get too bad to ignore, we're already committed to even more problems, because the excess carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That's why we keep getting these warnings, so we can avoid those problems before it's too late.
You are aware, I trust, of these things called plants. It turns out that they absorb carbon dioxide right out of the air. What's even cooler is that the more CO2 that's in the air, the faster they grow and thus the faster they absorb it. This is why greenhouses will often run with drastically increased CO2 levels.
Wow! This changes everything, you should tell someone about your amazing discovery!
Send it into Nature
Abstract:
I don't think global warming will happen because the plants will eat all the CO2 out of the air
Introduction:
Because plants use C02, so if we make more CO2 we'll get more plants and we'll have less CO2!
Conclusion:
No CO2 means no global warming!
Future Work:
We've got lots of CO2 so figure out why still there's more CO2 instead of more plants.
I stole this Sig
Yes, they are called RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways), what used to be the "scenarios" in older reports, and except for the dip in 2008/2009 global emissions were always above the worst case scenario. 63% of all CO2 has been emitted since scientists began to warn about AGW so there is no indication that the world will deviate from the worst case BAU path.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"... and what we've observed is the warming that was predicted. That seems to be the opposite of "totally wrong" to me."
No, it's not "the opposite of wrong"... it's just wrong. We HAVEN'T observed the warming that was predicted.
A paper in Nature last September (pdf) was a study of 117 of the most-cited CO2 climate warming models. 114 of them not only overestimated warming, the average (mean) amount they exaggerated warming (versus actual observed temperatures) was MORE THAN 100%.
And if you think that is somehow an anomaly, I assure you it isn't. The climate hasn't "warmed" in at least 16 years. AGW-proponent climate scientists publicly admit that they have no idea why.The reason is simple: their theory is fundamentally flawed.
The fact is, the theory of Catastrophic Greenhouse Gas Warming is just plain weak "science", and always has been. There is an awful lot of counter-evidence that you just haven't heard about because you have to actually look for it. It isn't spoon-fed to you by the government or the news.
Not to mention the truckloads of evidence that have continued to build concerning the compromised integrity of data, and its irresponsible handling by said climate scientists.
Add to that the publicly reported "statistics" that are so distorted one might even be justified in calling them fraudulent, like the bogus "97% consensus" claim.
And if you think "there has been no serious dispute" of these CO2-based warming claims, as many climate scientists and their supporters have tried to claim, you would be mistaken. That is a list of just some of the peer-reviewed papers that disagree.
There are mountains of such information out there, if you just but look. Do yourself and everyone else a favor, and be more skeptical.
No, you can make the temperature appear to be going down for short periods of time by carefully cherry picking the data. If the temperature actually went down, we would see the melting slow down instead of continuing to accelerate.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Your error is in assuming a simple, isolated system and ignoring the complexity of dealing with the horribly analog world of biology.
In general, there are two considerations for when, and how much, plants grow. The first is the amount of sunlight they receive (hours per day) and the second is the number of "degree days". Since duration of sunlight isn't going to change (at a certain latitude), let's focus on "degree days" first.
A "degree day" is based on the temperature of the day, so the higher the temperature - the higher the value. However, there are bounds for this. For example, corn needs at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but not more than 86 degrees Fahrenheit. i.e. - Below 50 means "0 degree days" and 92 will be the same number of degree days as if it were 86.
The problem comes in when it is far too warm which, for corn, comes in around 86 degrees. The plant hasn't adapted for growing in temperatures much higher, and will shut down growth; much higher temperatures will even cause damage to the plant. Here is a human analogy - a human might be able to run really fast and really far but, if it is 115 degrees outside, that isn't going to happen and any activity may result in heat stroke. A plant will be stressed in this kind of heat and will actually be damaged. In this way, too much heat will cause plants to grow less, and we will have lower yields.
However, since plants also depend on certain amount of sunlight, it isn't a simple matter of moving things northward (or southward in the Southern Hemisphere) to match temperature. All of the plants are also expecting a certain duration of sunlight. This isn't constant with latitude, so moving the plants north will reduce yield. (And more sunlight doesn't mean higher yield - plants also do things at night like release water vapor.) This means that we will have to reengineer our crops to match new conditions - which will take decades. (And crop genetics isn't a simple matter - companies spend billions on trying to make better species.) So, until we do that, we will have lower yields.
Also, many plant diseases like the heat (or like that they don't freeze to death in the winter - see Asian Soybean Rust ranges) - so they will enjoy millions of square miles of new territory - increasing the cost of production (herbicides and pesticides) and, since bugs and molds eat the plants, will give us lower yields.
The other problem is related to economics and infrastructure. Farmers have certain equipment to plant and harvest the crops native to their area. Plus, their fields have been designed for those certain crops. For example, they may be terraced in a certain way or be designed with a certain level of drainage based on existing weather patterns (temperature and rainfall). Renovating millions of square miles of farmland is going to be expensive and ridiculously time consuming and until it is modified to match new, prevailing weather patterns, will contribute to lower yields.
The other side to the economic coin is that decisions are not going to be made on a 50-100 year strategy. To operate next year, a farm needs to turn a profit this year. So, they aren't going to completely retool if yields go down 10% - it would make no sense. The capital costs would dwarf any profit from the new crops being put in. Therefore, they will operate at lower capacity and accept a lower profit - since it is still a profit. Sure, we will get changes when push comes to shove, but that will take decades as climate change forces them to change. Until that point - lower yield.
Moral of the story, we are looking at decades of lower yields as climate change really kicks in.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I come from a farming family, we do produce lots of crops including wheat.
If temperatures go warmer by a degree. It won't matter. Really it won't.
however, as temperatures change, rainfall patterns change.
For example, we get rain from westerlies in Northwest India from Dec-End feb.
So wheat gets water at times of growth, and while harvesting end march - late april there is hardly any rain.
Over the past 10 years it has changed. It can rain heavily in march-april also, which will destroy almost ripe wheat crop.
Heck, westerlies are active into may now.
Such change in rainfall patterns can destroy crops.
Another example, the himalayas got a lot of snow this year. Much more than normal. Good thing. But all of it started in feb in some regions, which will result in poor apple crop this time in some regions.
Any climate change which alters patterns(not necessarily warming or cooling, but change) has the potential to destroy agricultural yields. So climate change is a bad thing in general for agriculture unless it happens over millenia.
I would not mind climate change if it happened gradually like in olden times. We would adapt. But rapid change in rainfall patters over 3 decades. Everything goes for a toss.
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Here is the problem I have personally with AGW...it DOES NOT MATTER if you believe it or not, DOES NOT MATTER if AGW is 100% correct and happening because a a handful of ultra rich leeches has made damn sure that the ONLY "solution" you will get will be buying their magical carbon indulgences at a greatly elevated price of course.
Read the article above or look up "Al Gore carbon billionaire" to see why AGW does not matter as long as fucktards like Gore and Goldman Sachs have their fat piggie hands out, I mean for fucks sake Al Gore lives in a McMansion, flies around with a handful of guys in his personal LEAR JET and has a fricking fleet of SUVs drive him around to tell YOU what a shit you are for not taking the bus yet he has the gold plated balls to say he is "carbon neutral" because HE PAYS HIMSELF indulgences from his own fucking company...which he gets a God damned tax writeoff for!
I'm sorry folks but that is EXACTLY what you will get with Crap and Trade and carbon indulgences, a handful of uberrich douchebags that live like kings while telling YOU that you need to eat bugs and ride a fucking bus, all the while they get tax credits for moving YOUR money from their left pocket to their right!!! And you notice rev Al and Goldman NEVER EVER say a fucking word about limiting imports from China and India, the two biggest polluters which in the case of China we can actually detect it from the west coast? Wanna know why? Because that would hurt their profits LULZ.
If you wanna actually support real change? DON'T BUY THE SNAKE OIL being pushed by scammers like Gore and GS! They are counting on all these reports making you foolish enough to go "OMFG we have GOT to do something!" which will be followed by them selling you some scam like carbon indulgences which will ONLY give more of what we've had for the past half a century, a handful of uberrich scum making insane bank and exporting misery.
So until Rev Al and his pals aren't in the way with their hands out? You damned right I'm gonna fight against AGW, not because i don't think dumping crap in the air is bad, but because I don't think Gore's magic billion dollar carbon be-gone spray is gonna do a fucking thing except give Gore the ability to buy the nicest land and best food while YOU are supposed to live like a third world peasant...fuck that shit!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nothing is ever inconsistent with AGW predictions. Because it predicts everything.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
IPCC: doom gloom and the seas will rise by 'x' by 2100
Counter argument: given the complexity of the system and the shallow understanding of many processes, is it not likely that some small perturbation will greatly alter the predicted outcomes of your model ... especially over the time frames you are talking about?
IPCC: then we shall assume that if nothing changes, our outcomes will be proven valid
Counter argument: when in all history has 'nothing changed'? Ergo your models are so brittle as to be utterly unrealistic.
Also when the IPCC starts adding qualifiers that highlight the _accuracy_ of their models, then maybe they will have some credibility. But right now, where are the caveats and cautions clearly stating the assumptions of the models and the sensitivity of the model outcomes to those assumptions? That's right, there are none ever shown to the public.
Bunk.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.