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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."
Someone is getting their pockets lined. This is politics Al Gore style. Its pathetic, "food shortages" yeah right, because we all know food doesn't grow when the climate is warmer........ Scare tactics by intellectually challenged pseudo scientists.
I guess you have not been paying attention to the drought in the Central Valley of California. You will, when food prices shoot through the roof this summer.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
At this point, the IPCC is looking more like bad disaster fiction.
What problem do you have with the data?
The problem a lot of people have understanding AGW is separating the science that is settled from the unsettled predictions. There is widespread consensus that CO2 warms the atmosphere, and that anthropogenic CO2 has warmed it to some degree.
At the same time, there is a lot of science that is mere hypothesis. Very few scientists think the runaway Venus effect is realistic, for example.
The approach of the IPCC is to take the worst scenario that hasn't been conclusively rejected by the scientific community, and promoting that scenario most prominently, which is why we you see it being presented with judgement words, like "darkest yet." Their goal seems to be to make it look as dark, which is obviously not a good scientific approach.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
When setting your speed on the road, do you orient yourself on "the worst case scenario" (e.g. you car not handling your steering to avoid a suddenly appearing cow and hitting a tree in the middle of nowhere), or do you usually consider the "average scenario" (going on a dry, empty road)?
When you are driving your car;
After four hours of your mother shrieking at you to slow down when you are going 45 in a highway, do you eventually tune her out?
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 problem a lot of people have understanding AGW is separating the science that is settled from the unsettled predictions.
Nope.
The main problem is seeing through the fog created by the anti-AGW lobby.
https://www.google.es/search?q...
They think they're being free thinkers, that the AGW people are the ones drinking the establishment cool-aid. In reality it's the other way around.
No sig today...
The Central Valley was definitely NOT a desert, it was a dense grassland biome with up to 24 inches of rain a year. Additionally it had annual flooding bringing nutrients and water from the mountains. The only reason it is not a forest is because most of the rain happens during the winter.
The southern half of the Central Valley was home to the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, but it's dried up over the last century and a half because the water was diverted.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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.
So, you are not one of the people who has trouble recognizing which parts of AGW are settled science and which parts aren't? Is that what you are saying?
Nope, that's just you trying to act like a smart ass by implying that _you_ do.
If you want details, I believe that the following is settled:
a) Climate doesn't change spontaneously, something has to drive it
b) Global temperature is slowly going up (we keep on inventing better instruments to measure it, they keep telling us the exact same thing)
c) The only major heat source around here is the Sun
d) Greenhouse gases are the only gun producing any smoke at the moment (solar output isn't increasing)
e) CO2 is a greenhouse gas
f) Man is producing a lot of CO2 (and at the same time destroying some of the CO2 absorbing capability of the planet)
On a more "personal opinion" level, I believe:
g) The public consensus in the USA on AGW is very different from the rest of the world (via. paid lobbying and paid-for media stories).
h) The AGW "debate" in the USA closely resembles the Creation-vs-Evolution "debate", ie. a never-ending game of Whac-a-Mole against arguments that sound plausible but never stand up under scrutiny, no matter how convinced the creationists were when they were parroting them. One side has to spend vast resources to produce hard evidence, the other side doesn't feel they have any burden of proof whatsoever, they just make stuff up.
The list of arguments I refer to in (h) looks something like this. Maybe you've heard some of those arguments over the last few years. Well, guess what...?
Disagree? Perhaps you'd like to inject _your_ facts into this.
No sig today...
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
Those are all strawmen.
Facts: Global warming exists, mankind is driving it.
Everything else is just a case of "when?" and "how bad?" (which we obviously can't tell you)
No sig today...
because large chunks of land are currently frozen. Canada and Russia(the two largest countries) have tons of land but only a small percentage of those lands are farmable.
I keep reading people saying this, but it doesn't work that way. I can’t speak to Russia, but of the “tons of land” in northern Canada, the vast majority of it is either Laurentian Shield or frozen muskeg.
If the climate over the Laurentian Shield warms enough to grow agriculture crops, we will be able to grow ... as close to nothing as makes no difference. The Shield was scraped bare during the last glacial maximum. The vast majority of the Laurentian Shield has soil only one or two inches deep, below which is the bedrock of the Shield.
If the climate warms enough to thaw the muskeg, we will be able to grow ... as close to nothing as makes no difference. Muskeg is peat bog. It is next to useless for agriculture.
Even worse, when the muskeg thaws it will give off CO2, potentially vast quantities of it, resulting in a potentially huge positive feedback loop, accelerating climate warming.
Plus, presumably, the government in fact, abandoned the the infrastructure that supported each house (you know: highways, railways, power lines and power stations, sewage treatment plants, government buildinggs and services). And your new government (you immigrated each time - right?) was quite happy to build new infrastructure from the ground up - at no cost to yourself and millions of other immigrants?
We'd have to assume that's what happened, because otherwise your anecdote would not be analogous, and you would not have posted it, would you?
A more accurate example might be your mother screaming at you to slow down because you're going 90mph while the oil executive in the back seat is calling you a wimpy, pinko, commie hippy for driving so slow.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
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.
And you do realize that the farther north you go the shorter the growing season, i.e. the days get shorter faster as you go north. You can't just move all your farming north and expect similar yields.
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The lake in the central valley did dry up because water was diverted, but this was intentional. The lake was very shallow, IIRC less than 30' at the deepest location with an average less than 10'.
The government made the decision to dry out the lake and turn the area into active farmland. A massive irrigation and diversion project was undertaken and within a small period of time they dried out the lake and began farming what remained. That land is some of the most fertile in the US.
I can tell you that it is far from artificial. This year we received almost no rain or snow. Up until February there was virtually no rain. We have since only had a few storms and unseasonably warm weather. The snowpack is almost nonexistant this year. Last year was also rather dry as well. Even if they captured 100% of the water flowing from the Sierras this year it wouldn't help a whole lot.
Water in California is very carefully managed and the politicians can't really be faulted in this case. There just isn't any water to be had.
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Not only that, but contrary to the impression given by popular map projections if you move some optimal band towards the poles you will lose more area than you gain.
And as for the southern hemisphere, there's no new land in that direction anyway. Well not until Antarctica thaws out at least.
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.
Check out potholer54's series on climate change. He seems to do a good job covering what the climate scientists actually say vs. what the media reports, which is usually inaccurate (on both sides of the issue). In particular you should watch the one titled "The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC". Most of climate science doesn't rely on computer models.
Also note the IPCC doesn't do any research, rather they "[assess] the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change."
Parroting is the only thing that most of us can do. Both of you are doing it, unless one of you is an actual climate scientist with appropriate degrees and experiences, who has performed his/her own experiments and data collections to research how the earth's environment has behaved in the past.
97 out of 100 scientists are certain that the climate is going to become detrimental to our current society. That's enough for me.
If I didn't trust scientists, my next computer or cell phone purchase would involve the following: redevelop physics from scratch, including semiconductor, RF comms, and information theory. Build a 22nm lithography process. Test it. Otherwise, how do I know I'm not falling for a hoax?
Just because I don't understand something, doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. Yes, on the flip side, if one person tells me something, that person isn't automatically correct. That's where peer review comes in.
For the computer purchase example, I could test a new computer. That's a great solution for that scenario. But from where do we get a second earth to test Climate Change?
Yes, shutting down coal plants overnight is bad: it would cause massive chaos. That's exactly what climatologists are trying to avoid. However, we can work towards getting those plants offline, and work towards zero emission vehicles. On the off-chance all those scientists are wrong about climate change, at least our cities would have better air.
we move / replace infrastructure all the time.
Indeed we do. Included in the infrastructure we replace is (a) Power generation facilities and (b) cars, both of which are routinely replaced with better, more efficent technologies.
Which is why I find this whole line of argument rather curious.
You (and you cohorts) apparently think that moving a whole country including ALL the infrastrucure that supports that country, and, explicitly including the transport and opower generation infrastructure, is going to be cheaper than replacing a small portion of that infrastructure and leaving our farms where they are. How much do you think the power generation infrastructure is as a percentage of the whole? 5%? 7%?
What a nonsense argument. I suggest if you guys can't do basic maths you aren't in a position to dictate to us how we ought to handle this situation.
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.
"That doesn't even begin to cover how many scientists actually believe that the IPCC reports are too conservative in their predictions."
"many scientists". Please. Darwin. Copernicus.
"97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Michael K. Oliver
Error bars. 75% error. For a 35 year old model to diverge like that from nature means it's basically - junk. You took applied math in school, right?
"When your hypothesis disagrees with nature, it's wrong" - Feyman.
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.