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NASA: Increasing Carbon Emissions Risk Megadroughts
An anonymous reader writes: Droughts in the western U.S. have been bad recently, but not as bad as they could be. Researchers from NASA, Cornell, and Columbia are now warning that if we don't slow the rate at which we produce greenhouse gases, then we're dramatically increasing our odds of a drought that lasts upwards of three decades. "The scientists were interested in megadroughts that took place between 1100 and 1300 in North America. These medieval-period droughts, on a year-to-year basis, were no worse than droughts seen in the recent past. But they lasted, in some cases, 30 to 50 years. When these past megadroughts are compared side-by-side with computer model projections of the 21st century, both the moderate and business-as-usual emissions scenarios are drier, and the risk of droughts lasting 30 years or longer increases significantly."
while those poor old dark ages folk didn't and look what happened to them! They burned and burned and burned and, so, history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.
When these past megadroughts are compared side-by-side with computer model projections of the 21st century,
How about we fix the climate models before using them to predict things? If they can't predict things, they can't predict things.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I watched the video. Pathetic. So there is no record of long droughts in the US. But it is going to get worse! I suggest you ask the Anasazi why they left their lands. Oh geez. A 300 year drought without any SUVs and with less population?
Governments and corporations capable of doing this wont. There is no profit in planning for the future. Short-sighted, instant gratification is what drives most of society.
Ahh no. [posts link to site funded by ALEC, Exxon Mobil, and Richard Mellon Scaife] But yes keep telling yourself that the warm periods weren't global and miraculously just materialized where people could record it.
Ahh no., I didn't just tell myself.
Climate change science is kind of like that. Something bad is happening, and it is causally linked to our exponential spread over the earth's crust. Current indications are that we are impacting weather patterns to our detriment.
You don't have to be thankful the work of your planet-saving scientists, but we'll not have a cross word from you neither.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Actually 1100 years ago CO2 was pretty much at a high point for the last 1 million years at 280 ppm. During the cycle of glaciations/interglacials that have occurred on an ~100,000 year period for the last 800,000 years the peak CO2 level was 300 ppm or below and during the height of the glaciations it dropped into the 190 ppm range. At 400 ppm now it's higher than it's been in 4 or 5 million years if not longer, before anything resembling modern humans evolved.
Cons:
Why you stupid sonofabitch. You think because there's been a lot of rain in your zip code that it has anything to do with global climate patterns? And not only that, but you're basing it on your memory of the last 30 years when you can't even remember the difference between weather and climate. How are you even able to turn your computer on in the morning?
God damn, it's no wonder this country is in such decline. We have people who don't have the sense of a fucking housefly.
You are welcome on my lawn.
you're confused because this is a rare case of a reverse poe's law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
rather than fundamentalism though, what is being misunderstood is the sarcasm
the troll is speaking sarcastically. his position is "like NASA knows shit, and we should all bow down before mighty NASA, what a joke"
but since the position he is speaking sarcastically about is extreme (that NASA doesn't have anything useful to say), he sounds genuinely earnest about not heeding NASA's warnings. he sounds earnest, by accident
so i guess a follow up observation to poe's law would be "a sarcastic troll is unintentionally useful and perceptive"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We can desalinate, end of story.
That takes energy. Lots of it. Desalination is not a panacea for drought-relief. Just ask California.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's definitely not falsifiable with the red herrings and ad hominems you're using.
But keep trying. Maybe you'll have a breakthrough.
From reading your comments since you created your Slashdot account a few weeks ago, I get the feeling that before we're done here, you're going to be calling climate scientists, "SJWs". That might help make you're point, or at least clarify for the rest of us how seriously we should take your comments.
You are welcome on my lawn.
These AGW stories keep getting more pathetic as time goes by. I don't remember a year as wet as this one in 30 years.
That seems.. a somewhat less scientific method of reaching a conclusion than the methods climatologists use to reach theirs.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I see these two arguments being made over and over in these threads.
This one: "Correlation is not causation. So if something correlates, it means it's being caused by something else."
And this: "They're saying we're going to get more hurricanes? I guess they were driving SUVs and burning fossil fuels in 1667 when a hurricane hit Jamestown, Virginia, right? Huh? Huh?"
There's lots of sun, wind, and nukes.
Sun? I'm not having your dirty solar panels in our street, they are unsightly and will adversely affect our property prices. No, you won't be building a solar farm either, because BANANA and a bunch of other irrelevant and emotional reasons.
Wind? Dear God, those things are the work of the Devil! There will be absolutely no wind turbines anywhere near anything that I can see or might one day reasonably expect to travel to. I'll mire up any such attempts (from Age of Stupid) by opposing your project in council, by lobbying everyone and anyone I can get within earshot of and finally by protesting publicly and attacking the character of the poor sap who thought he or she might be able to make the world a little better off with wind power.
As for nukes, don't even get me started.
Apologies for all the sarcasm Fustakrakich but sometimes I can't help myself. Between the NIMBYs and the environmentalist arseholes that want us all back in the dark ages, Humanity is going to suffer very significantly.
As well it should for its collective fucking selfishness and unbelievable stupidity.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Uh huh. Those damn NASA scientists trying to put one over on old cheesybagel, you betcha. And those other scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who confirmed the findings, they're in on it, too. They'll have to get up pretty early in the morning if they want to fool an expert in "Earth history and geology" such as yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
if its colder than predicted - its weather
Because those are short term predictions made days ahead by weathermen. Weather is less predictable in the short term than climate in the long term. Over a longer term (meaning years, not days) temperatures haven't been "colder than predicted".
if its the same temp as predicted - it shows "the models are right"
So?
if its warmer than predicted - OMG global warming!!!!
14 of the 15 hottest years on record have been this century. (The exception was 1998, an El Nino year.) 15 years is a longer term than weathermen deal with.
People do seem to understand the difference between short term and long term phenomena if it's a stock price we're talking about. I don't hear people asking "if Apple stock is rising, then what about the high prices during 2012?" as if it was the medieval warming period. But if it's a planet's temperature- "la la la la, fingers in my ears, I can't hear you!"
What you say is true. There were prehistoric lakes, several of them like Lake Bonneville and Fort Rock lake in my neck of the woods. But then the climate changed and they dried up.
If you had read the NASA release on the study you would have seen that they explicitly called out soil moisture as a factor in the predicted droughts in North America. That's what I was pointing out in my post.
In the Southwest, climate change would likely cause reduced rainfall and increased temperatures that will evaporate more water from the soil. In the Central Plains, drying would largely be caused by the same temperature-driven increase in evaporation.
So what they're saying is in the Central Plains there won't necessarily be less precipitation but hotter temperatures will cause the soil to dry out more exacerbating the drought situation.
As for the rest of your post I think if you're going to say that humans are too insignificant to affect the climate you need to quantify your objections. Saying humans are insignificant sounds sciencey but you need to provide actual evidence for that statement, not just some hand waving.
A 42% increase in atmospheric CO2 in less than 200 years and having a CO2 level that hasn't been seen for over 4 million years seems pretty significant to me. Proving the increase is human caused is trivial. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Yes, I know that water vapor causes about double the greenhouse effect that CO2 does but as a condensing greenhouse gas the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is limited by temperature. CO2 does not condense out of the atmosphere and just continues to build up as long as the amount emitted exceeds the natural rate of removal.
I've always taken the big bang theory with a grain of salt. I accepted that it was the best hypothesis of the origin of the universe we had and it did a reasonable job of explaining the observations but I always felt there was more to discover.
Having a discussion is fine but it needs to be based in reality and the reality is CO2 is a major factor in the climate change we are seeing.
That's an appeal to authority argument PopeRatzo.
Your parents should have read to you the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes.
And your arguments seem to be based on appealing to yourself as an authority; e.g. your claim that you "know Earth history and geology well to know that AGW is bunk".
I find PopeRatzo's appeal to legitimate expertise much more compelling.
Michael Mann. Great.
Ask him why the shepherd nomadic Genghis Khan led Mongol hordes bothered leaving Mongolia in the MWP.
Maybe because they were nomadic.
WtfUWT. ROTFLMAO.
Actually that graph may be reasonably accurate but it's mostly irrelevant because CO2 is not the only factor affecting climate. But most of the other big climate factors operate on long enough time scales that they aren't a significant factor on century time scales. For instance you may notice that there is a big temperature drop from 5.2 to 1.64 million years ago. A major factor in that appears to be the rising of the Isthmus of Panama cutting off water flow between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans causing the climate to cool.
For the last 800,000 years temperature and CO2 have tracked pretty well together.
Yes. Obscuring measurements by lying with statistics is more scientific.
If you genuinely believe this whole AGW thing is a global conspiracy and that only enlightened ones who can see through the lies (such as yourself) can save us from the deception, then I'll make sure I never waste my time engaging you in conversation again.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
not by much
Well then, I suggest you turn in all your modern technology and go back to living in a fucking mud hut.
The scientific method you are emptying your bowels on with your comment is the same that put you in a nice warm house with electricity and Internet.
If you can't find it within yourself to see the value that science and the scientific method had brought us (in spite of the tireless stupidity of religion I might add) then you're nothing but a hypocrite.
Tell me I've gotten you wrong, please. You've never struck me as this type and I often enjoy your posts.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
All droughts are man's fault. Water can be transported across continents just as easily as gas and oil. We are now capable of greening the deserts, but most people feel it's more profitable to prepare for war over water, and keep it scarce and profitable. There is no reason for shortages of any kind anymore. They are all due to waste and greed.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I watched the video. Pathetic. So there is no record of long droughts in the US. But it is going to get worse! I suggest you ask the Anasazi why they left their lands. Oh geez. A 300 year drought without any SUVs and with less population?
+5 insightful? What is insightful about this?
The linked Wikipedia article mentions the supposed "300 year drought" in a single sentence that ends with... wait for it... "citation needed". Nice.
If you actually bother to read TFA, you will see that the entire point is that droughts in the near future are likely to be similar to those that occured around the time the Anasazi were abandoning their villages. The researchers never claim that "there is no record of long droughts in the US". Their conclusion is that there were long droughts in the past, and we are likely to soon see them again.
Reading the posts here saddens me. All this hate on climate research telling that NASA is only interested in more funding (sound like MY TAX DOLLARS!!!!), or that man made climate change is a hoax comments, or the science was wrong in the past. This only tells me that all this poster do not understand science or don't want to understand science. And that a deep conservatism has hit the US. So while we try to change our impact on climate and in general on natural resources, you will continue to pollute the world. Too bad that we have to life on the same planet.
Thanks for the link to the PNAS paper. From what I could tell from an admittedly quick read of the article, though, it makes no claims about a "300 year drought" during the medieval period in North America. What it does say is that drought events were common during this time period, and that they often persisted for one or more decades. For example, the article says, "the 12th century medieval drought persisted with an extent and severity displayed in the worst-case decade, 1146–1155, for two decades, 1140–1159". That's not 300 years of continuous drought. Yes, the overall mean precipitation in the Southwest was lower during the medieval centuries, but that doesn't mean there was continuous drought during this time.
For what it's worth, the conclusions of the PNAS paper are pretty much in total agreement with what the researchers in the NASA study found.