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Experts: Aim of 2 Degrees Climate Goal Insufficient
An anonymous reader points out that a long held goal of keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising above 2 degrees Celsius might not be good enough. "A long-held benchmark for limiting global warming is 'utterly inadequate,' a leading U.N. climate scientist declared. Keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising past 2 degrees Celsius – a cap established by studies in the early 1970s – is far too loose a goal, Petra Tschakert, a professor at Penn State University and a lead author of an assessment report for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said in a commentary published in the journal Climate Change Responses. Already, with an average increase of just 0.8 degrees Celsius, she wrote, 'negative impacts' are 'widespread across the globe.' Tschakert called for lowering the warming target to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
Here is a link to the complete, actual commentary from which all the other stories derive.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Considering that Milankovitch cycles show the earth's recent temperature swings are significantly more than 1.5 degrees WITHOUT impact from man, this seems a bit nutty. Global climate change has been happening for a long time before man started burning fossil fuels. Sure it sucks for some, but then again, it will be sweet for some people who get benefits from such a change. Life goes on, just like it has in the past ice ages, despite 1000 metre thick glaciers covering much of Europe and N. America.
Earth is not a static closed system folks... It changes shitloads more all by itself then any amount attributed to by even the most generous of climate analysts. Get used to it. Buy a vineyard in England.
Less well known perhaps is a critique from feminist social scientists who interrogate what may be deemed ‘acceptable’ and what may be ‘dangerous’, and for whom, and who contest the global community as a homogeneous entity. Joni Seager, for instance, demonstrates how notions of acceptability always mirror ‘a prism of privilege, power, and geography’ [14]. She argues that those for whom a 2C target [are] politicians and economists from the global North deeply entrenched in a masculinized rationality that nature can be controlled and that in the imminent climate race with inevitable winners and losers they will be among the former. Seager rejects the notion of a 2C target as a real geophysical threshold that neatly distinguishes between little and much danger
That is worth a read for educational purposes alone.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Either 2 degrees or 1.5 it doesn't really matter as we're going to go sailing by both of them and keep on going by a wide margin. We've started to late and done too little to even meet the 2 degree goal. And the commitments that are being proposed for the upcoming summit in France later this year don't look like they are going to be enough.
California is regularly in drought. It's a 500 year cycle for them.
But good of you to bring it up, If the environmentalists hadn't been blocking water management and in general been in the business of creating problems http://naturalresources.house.....
And yet, the people who study this for a living disagree with you. Weird, right?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
These stories are tiring as there is no chance for "settled science fact" in climate change.
All of these estimates are based on elaborate math models and yet the Earth's long term climate ON ITS OWN, has swung widely over recorded history.
And from the geologic history, we know we will again go into another ice age based on the history of the change in the Earth-Sun orbit & precession changes on a regular 110,000 year cycle. And without human intervention, the ice age ends.
Isn't Florida supposed to be underwater ?
Since you obviously haven't been here for a while, many parts of Florida are underwater at high tide. In Palm Beach and parts of Miami storm drains flow backwards and boat docks are underwater. Just across the inlet, West Palm Beach has a massive project going on to raise sewer lines so toilets will confinue flushing and there are several similar projects in Miami. They're also spending hundreds of millions to reinforce the well casings in the wells Miami gets its freshwater.
Florida is fighting that losing battle quietly. It's not like an area dependent on tourism and investment can announce they're sinking and there's no way to stop it but that's the reality.
Climate deniers are the most ignorant fraction of our society.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I live in Florida, and that has nothing to do with rising sea levels but rising population levels.
Hint: More paving = More drainage in a rainy climate.
The area of geography she studies is how communities/economies are impacted by and adapt to changes in prevailing climates, which seems pretty relevant, depending on what question you're asking. She would be a poor authority on questions like modeling the impact of CO2 on weather, but more within her area if asking questions like, "how easy/difficult would it be for Indonesians to adapt to a 2" ocean-level rise?".
In terms of the IPCC reports, the research/authorship is divided into three working groups: #1 studies the underlying science; #2 studies impacts & adaptation; #3 studies possible mitigation strategies. She's part of #2.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The basic physics of climate change is that increasing levels of gases trap more energy from the sun, increasing the amount of energy in our atmosphere and climate system. We know by and large, most of the energy is stored in the oceans as water holds energy much better than gases in the air.
With such a simple observation, I'd like to make the observation that it seems too few of the IPCC guys pushing for policy stuff are paying any attention to the energy budget. Instead, we have the only basis scientifically being that the average surface temperature is warming, and CO2 levels are rising and we are the ones pushing them up. That's all well and good, and they are important observations. About 30 years ago though we started sending up satellites to measure incoming and outgoing radiation. The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract:
Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in the CMIP5 ensemble mean and observations agree, this may be due to a cancelation of errors in outgoing longwave and absorbed solar radiation.
Of COURSE it isn't sufficient.
When - ever - has an activist said "yeah, well, what's being done is pretty much good, yeah. I'm happy. I guess I don't have much to be upset about any more"?
Here's a hint: if there's one thing I can guarantee the climate won't do, is be static.
-Styopa
Wasn't it supposed to raising 2 degrees/decade yy now ?
Aren't the poles supposed to be ice free by now ?
Isn't Florida supposed to be underwater ?
Isn't the entire east coast supposed to be rubble from super hurricanes ?
Dustbowls that would make the 1930s look like nothing ?
Really enough of the chicken little.
Instead of listening to hyperbole why don't you peruse the actual scientific literature on those subjects? You won't find any of that in the time frames you contemplate.
Some environmentalists will blame anything they can on AGW. That doesn't mean that the science itself is wrong, and that it isn't a pressing problem. It just means that there are partisan hacks (people just like you) on the opposite side of the issue to you. They are stupid. So what.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It is curious that those that tend to see climate change as a urgent problem, tend to advocate cultural solutions, whereas those that see climate change as a less urgent problem tend to advocate technological solutions. The irony being that technological solutions are generally reasonably quick to invent and implement, whereas cultural solutions often take a human generation or more to take hold. For the all talk of a climate change apocalypse, technology got us into this mess and technology will get us out of it. Also don't underestimate the inventiveness of capitalism, its not very good at solving problems that will affect the next generation, but is highly focused at solving problems that affect us right now and have a direct monetary cost associated with them.
The IPCC has stated that sea level rise this century will likely be in the neighborhood of 2.6 feet or less but that extreme conditions could cause as much as a 6.5 foot rise in sea levels over the next hundred years. Maybe you are referring to Al Gore's propaganda where he stated a bunch of US cities could soon be underwater in the near future. You must remember Al Gore is a politician and as such, if his lips move, he's lying.
Really ? That's what I must remember ?
It couldn't be James Hansen predicting the West Side Highway would be under water by 2005 ?
http://www.salon.com/2001/10/2...
The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
But not newly underwater. Sea levels have risen about 200 mm, or about 7.8 inches in the last century (1910 to 2008) (also, the rate of rise hasn't changed much, either -- see linked graph again.) Which time period has to include almost all, or perhaps all, of Florida's sewer infrastructure -- Miami was officially incorporated as a city with a population of just over 300 on July 28, 1896. Fort Lauderdale was incorporated even later -- 1911. This tells us quite handily that region's sewage infrastructure was built during that 7.8 inch rise.
So if Florida's infrastructure is seeing drainage run backwards due to an 8 inch change in levels, that is clearly related to absolutely dismal design and implementation -- not to sea level rise. I mean, good grief. What do you think the design criteria were? "If anything at ALL happens, sewers should overflow?" Please refer to the actual data when making claims. Also: If your public officials have been telling you that this is due to sea level rise, they are lying through their teeth, and you should take them to task for it. Good luck with that.
Yes, no doubt. But they aren't fighting with sea level rise. They're fighting with incompetence.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How unusual is the 2012–2014 California drought?
By Daniel Griffin and Kevin J. Anchukaitis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 41, Issue 24, December 2014
Abstract
For the past three years (2012–2014), California has experienced the most severe drought conditions in its last century. But how unusual is this event? Here we use two paleoclimate reconstructions of drought and precipitation for Central and Southern California to place this current event in the context of the last millennium. We demonstrate that while 3 year periods of persistent below-average soil moisture are not uncommon, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years. Tree ring chronologies extended through the 2014 growing season reveal that precipitation during the drought has been anomalously low but not outside the range of natural variability. The current California drought is exceptionally severe in the context of at least the last millennium and is driven by reduced though not unprecedented precipitation and record high temperatures.
All IPCC group reports are finalised via political negotiation except for one group. WG1 is the scientific group, all the others refer back to the WG1 report for factual information, the other groups argue about how to present those facts in their own working group(WG). In 25yrs of incredibly intense scrutiny, nobody has ever found a factual error in the final versions of a WG1 report. That really is a very robust outcome and a credit to the scientists involved.
Only nations that donate to the IPCC budget get a vote on the other reports, last I checked there were ~135 nations who together represent pretty much every political view in the rainbow, it takes a long time for them to agree. The IPCC budget is $5-6M/yr, nobody who actually works on the reports is paid a dime by the IPCC, all of the scientists involved DONATE their time. Their financial accounts are on their web site. Try finding the accounts for an anti-science no-think-tank such Senator Inhofe's barking dog - the heartland institute.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.